


Nine Months to Love

by lzclotho



Series: The Unplanned Happy Ending [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Pregnant Emma, Romance, Slow Build, Swan-Mills Family, Unplanned Pregnancy, team moms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2109558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lzclotho/pseuds/lzclotho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina overhears that Emma is pregnant. As the months pass, she is frequently at Emma’s place, and Emma at hers. Emma and Regina grow emotionally closer as the pregnancy goes through ups and downs. 10 chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Expectations

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the "Bangin' All Summer" 2014 SwanQueen Big Bang. Many thanks to dragonwriterca (Carolyn) for the continual support on this one, and bearhugsbeerhugs for the sharp-eyed beta reading to finish it up. Many thanks to yellowermine for the wonderful cover art! http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/5054513

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month 1. Regina overhears Emma telling Snow that she is pregnant by Hook. She insists Emma tell their son.

“Oh, honey, I heard from your father that Hook set sail today.”

Emma turned at the sound of her mother’s first words as the other woman entered the sheriff’s station. She just wanted morning coffee. The pot, sitting on the far counter near the cells, had been calling her name since she released Leroy. “Well, good morning to you,” she said instead.

Snow blithely crossed to the seat by the desk and reached out for Emma’s arm. She gritted her teeth, but didn’t pull away. “He’ll be back.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Oh, Emma, you just have to believe. Have hope. He’s probably just handling something that came up. He’ll come back.”

“Mar--Mom,” Emma exhaled. “Hook is not coming back because I told him to go.”

“Why on earth would you do that? He’s your --”

Now Emma did snatch back her arm. “If you say true love, I will never speak to you again.”

Snow’s mouth, which had been open to say something else, snapped shut. But her eyes, her eyes dammed up with all the words she wanted to say. Emma started for her coffee, her back stiffening with each step as she awaited the explosion behind her when the woman couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“You have to go after him, tell him you didn’t mean it. He’s…”

“Hook is NOT my happiness. He is not my true love. He was a… mistake.” Emma grimaced. Self-consciously she rubbed her stomach.

“But you’re hurting,” Snow observed.

“I don’t need him. He isn’t anything to me,” Emma growled. She reached for the coffee carafe and watched her hands shaking as she poured a mug. God, her mind was screaming with memories. She just needed it to shut up for one minute. “He left, and I’m glad.”

“What happened? What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. And I should have. I should have protected myself. Now, I have. Killian Jones can just fuck off.”

“Protect yourself? What happened?” Snow’s confused tone set the match to Emma’s temper. She threw the half-full mug of coffee against the wall, watching its dark brown liquid splash as the ceramic shattered, rattling her teeth, tiny shards clattering to the floor.

Snow gasped. Emma sighed. She lowered to the floor, grabbing a tissue box off the desk, and used the tissues to pick up the bits of ceramic and blot up the liquid.

“Emma, what happened?”

She stopped, bowed her head. “I was stupid. Careless. I told Hook. I’m… pregnant.”

Snow flung herself to the floor and her arms wrapped around Emma’s shaking shoulders. It didn’t stop the shaking, but it was some steadiness in the storm tumult of her emotions as Emma cried.

Snow’s voice when it finally came again was timid, “Honey.” More like the Disney version Emma remembered watching as a child. “You--”

“I will not go after that handless pirate,” Emma snapped. “I did this once before by myself, I will fucking well do it again.” She pushed to her feet, away from her mother. Stumbling to steady herself, her hands slapped hard against the nearby desk. The sting brought tears again to her eyes which she furiously shook out. Something jumped in her peripheral vision. Her head snapped around. “Regina?”

The former mayor’s brown eyes were wide and startled. Perfectly red lips snapped shut and she spun on her heels, striding quickly toward the exit of the building.

Oh shit, it’s hand-off day. “Regina!” She’d forgotten. Regina must have come looking for her when Emma didn’t meet her and Henry at Granny’s at the agreed upon time.

Snow was struggling to her feet as Emma bolted in pursuit.

 

* * *

  

“Regina! Stop!”

The woman stopped with her hand on the pressure bar for the exit door. “Sheriff.” Regina’s voice was cool, uninflected, and she didn’t turn around.

“Regina, I’m sorry I missed our meeting. Something… came up.”

“Seems you were missing a few other things as well,” Regina said sharply.

“What?”

“Where should I begin?” She demanded, “Have you told Henry?”

“I’ll tell him about Hook leaving when it’s appropriate,” Emma retorted.

“This is not about Hook. Henry will survive that man’s departure easily. You’re pregnant,” Regina hissed.

“You heard that?”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“Regina, you have to... please, please…”

“What, Miss Swan? Be pleased for you?”

“Please don’t tell Henry?”

“Do you intend to keep this one?”

Emma looked back at the inner office where she knew her mother waited. Fuck. She shrugged; she shook her head; she nodded.

“I guess so.”

Regina turned. “It’s time to see our son,” she said, not looking back, though her voice sounded curiously pained. Emma wondered what Regina had to worry about; Emma was the one who was pregnant. But there was an almost magnetic pull to follow in the brunette’s wake, so Emma trailed behind, her hands shaking again and hiding awkwardly in the front pockets of her red jacket.

 

* * *

  

Regina all but marched into Granny’s, her gaze finding Henry still seated. He sipped on his milkshake with ever-watchful Ruby across from him. The waitress laughed at something as Henry smirked around the top of his straw. His gaze drifted from the brunette’s red-streaked hair. He jolted upright when his gaze fell on Regina, no doubt seeing Emma behind her. “Moms!”

Turning to see the reaction on Emma’s face, Regina watched the blonde pull her hands from her pockets and run her fingers through the top of her hair. “Hey, kid. Sorry ‘bout the wait. I, uh, was dealing with something at the station.”

“But you’re ready to go now?”

Regina met Emma’s eyes and gave a significant lift of her eyebrow. Tell him, she conveyed with a significant drop of her eyes to Henry’s head as their son stood and stepped up to stand alongside her.

“Yeah, I… You wanna stay here for dinner or go back to the apartment?”

Henry looked at Regina who immediately schooled her features, sensing Emma felt cornered. Surprised, Regina felt no desire to push or embarrass Emma at the moment.

“We can eat with your mom, if she’d like?” Emma asked. Her gaze lifted to Regina’s, her tongue surprisingly slipping out to lick her lips. Regina realized Emma was nervous. Either she didn’t want to be alone with Henry, so she could use another adult’s presence as an excuse not to speak of the deeply personal matter, or she didn’t know how to explain the situation to Henry.

Regina wasn’t going to let Emma get away with the delaying tactic. “I actually have an appointment. I should be getting on with it.”

Emma frowned. Regina shook her head as she walked out of the diner, leaving Henry and Emma alone. She couldn’t resist glancing back over her shoulder, however, before passing out the door to the street.

###


	2. Mornings Make Me Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month 2. Regina discovers Emma is suffering from morning sickness, and offers to help. For Henry, of course.

Regina didn’t see Emma, or Henry, for four days. She continued her work at city hall, and Emma, she heard through the grapevine, continued to work unabated at the sheriff’s office.

Finally, Friday evening arrived, the night of a performance at the school in which Henry was participating. Arriving early as she preferred to not draw undue attention to herself, Regina was just turning to settle into a chair when she saw Emma enter with Henry holding her hand. It was Henry’s expression that told Regina everything she needed to know.

Her son, always raised to have impeccable manners, was leading Emma to a seat, solicitous and careful, even perhaps a little protective as he stepped in front of her and almost led the way. It was gallant behavior Regina expected he had learned observing David around Snow. So Emma had obviously told Henry about her pregnancy. It remained to be determined what, if anything, he understood about Emma’s feelings or plans regarding the unborn child’s father.

After Emma was seated, Henry moved up the aisle toward the stage. When he noticed Regina, he smiled at her, but then glanced back toward Emma one last time before walking over to where she was now standing. “Good evening, Henry,” she said with a smile.

“Hi, Mom.” He hugged her.

Regina allowed herself to forget Emma’s issues while she indulged in the emotions that always suffused her at the contact and tight hold of her son’s arms around her. She cupped the back of his head, now even with her shoulder, and dropped her cheek the very short distance to rest upon his hair.

“It’s good to see you, sweetheart,” she said, finally letting him step back. She contented herself with the fact that he allowed her to run her fingers through the crown of his hair.

“It’s good to see you, too. I think Emma’s going to talk to you about taking me home tonight, so don’t be surprised.”

“Why?” Regina asked. “Did something happen?”

“She kinda… well, she needs her mornings alone for a while.”

Regina looked at Emma, then back down to Henry. “Do you know why?”

“Yeah, but it’s her business, I guess.”

“All right. Do you want to come home?”

“I’d rather help her out, but, you know, she’s kinda got this ‘do it herself’ kind of thing.”

Regina smiled, biting her lip to keep from chuckling. “Yes, I am familiar with that particular trait of Miss Swan’s.”

“Henry?” They both turned to the stage to see Henry’s teacher, Miss Merryweather, gesturing toward him.

Henry smiled. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you after.” He again hugged her, quick but tight.

“Yes, you will.” She patted his shoulder and turned, letting her gaze follow him up the side steps of the stage where he and Merryweather disappeared behind the curtain, out of sight.

Regina studied Emma, recognizing an unfamiliar meekness to the woman’s posture, hunched in on herself as she sat, unengaged with any of the other parents around her. When Emma looked up from the program she’d been reading, she immediately looked away from Regina when their gazes happened to intersect.

In that moment, Regina knew Henry might know Emma was pregnant, but he had not been told Emma intended to raise the child alone. Now, she knew the source of Henry’s concern. He was a bright child, and no doubt had already deduced the situation, but Emma’s reluctance to talk about it with him, after their openness of the last few years, made him worried for her.

Regina sat down only after studying Emma’s turned head for another few moments.

 

* * *

 

 

Following the event, Henry walked between Emma and Regina out on the sidewalk. Emma hadn’t yet spoken beyond telling Henry she thought he’d done a wonderful job.

He looked to Regina as if looking for support. Regina put her hands on Henry’s shoulders, drawing him and herself to a halt on the sidewalk, both studying Emma who walked on for a few more steps before stopping and turning back to look at them.

“Something wrong?” Emma asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Regina replied.

“I’m not feeling well. I was gonna ask you… Do you mind taking Henry early this week? I… gotta do some stuff.”

“Ma?” Henry asked.

“It’s okay, kid. I’ll be fine next week, yeah?”

Now, Regina was frustrated on Henry’s behalf. “Henry, would you go to the car? I’d like a word with Emma for a moment?”

Henry nodded and hurried toward her Mercedes, parked surprisingly, next to Emma’s yellow Beetle. “He knows something’s wrong, Emma,” Regina said as soon as Henry was out of earshot. “You have to tell him everything. We both learned what happens when we keep secrets.”

“He’s going to want me to go after Hook.”

“Then tell him why you won’t.”

“He believes in all the true love stuff, two parents makes a family.”

“I think his definition of family has been getting wider all the time.”

“If you think I’m wrong to keep things from him, why haven’t you told him what you know?”

“There’s only one person in this family who gives away others’ secrets, Emma, and it will never be me.”

“Seriously? You have to make a jab at my mother now?”

Regina watched Emma’s face crack a faint smile. “What’s actually the problem?”

“I’m getting terrible morning sickness, and I don’t think it’s fair to Henry that I’m such a wreck every morning.”

“Have you tried anything to get rid of it?”

“Crackers and tea, which is disgusting by the way,” Emma remarked. “Doesn’t help. Didn’t when I was pregnant with Henry either.”

“What did help with Henry?” Regina moved closer to Emma, lowering her voice as others exiting the school auditorium moved around them.

“Laying absolutely still in my prison bunk for ten hours a day.”

Regina’s head jerked back, her gaze locking with Emma’s. Oh. Right. Discussing her pregnancy brought that memory back, too. “I’m sorry,” Regina said after a moment. And she found she meant it sincerely.

She looked at the ground, then at Henry leaning on the car surreptitiously watching them. “Perhaps I can help.”

“No magic,” Emma insisted.

Regina felt her stomach flip. This wasn’t about a promise to Henry. This was a need of Emma’s. She felt a surprising feeling of privilege touch her. She smiled. “No magic. In the Enchanted Forest there were many home remedies for everything from bat fever to sickness during pregnancy. Best of all, everything was natural.” Snow White would know them as well as Regina did, but she understood that Emma was unable to talk to her mother about this right now. Snow could be like a dog with a bone and, though well meaning, Snow would undoubtedly drive Emma crazy trying to convince her to make contact with Hook.

“I’ll try anything. It’s only been a week, but I couldn’t stand it if it went on for another six months, like it did before.”

“All right. Let Henry go home with you tonight; you don’t want him to worry. I’ll come by for breakfast, bring a few ideas.”

“Regina?”

“I’ll see you in the morning, Emma.” Regina walked quickly away, meeting Henry running toward her. “Henry, go home with Emma. I’ll stop by the apartment tomorrow, all right?”

“You sure?” Emma asked.

Regina had no idea what made her say it, but Emma looked so forlorn as she held the yellow car’s door for Henry. “Trust me?”

Emma’s sadness sharpened for a moment but then she nodded, her expression clearing to one of acceptance. Regina slipped into the driver seat of her Mercedes and pulled out, watching in the rear view as Emma walked around to the driver side of her car. There was a grimace and Emma’s hand pressed briefly to her stomach before she lowered herself into the driver seat.

 

* * *

 

 

Regina could not recall the last time she had awakened so early. But she was standing at Emma’s door about 6 a.m., with just under an hour to get Henry ready for school. Henry answered the door; his relief upon seeing her was palpable.

“Ma’s in the bathroom already,” he said.

Regina stepped inside the small living room. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

“I poured myself some wheat bits,” he told her.

“You need juice, perhaps a piece of fruit?”

“Emma’s got canned pears.”

“It’ll do.” Regina dropped her light coat onto the back of the couch. As she followed Henry behind the small island that separated the kitchen from the living room, she could hear shuffling behind a nearby wall. A glance told her it was likely the bathroom, with Emma inside.

Henry helped her gather two small clear and clean glasses. He found a small carton of guava juice. Regina raised her eyebrow at it, but nodded. She was more of an apple juice fan herself, and Henry had grown up with the simple light amber juice. She wondered where Emma had gained a taste for the tropical fruit.

She looked through the rest of the refrigerator while Henry sat down to consume his breakfast. She brought out an egg and, using a fork when she could not come up with a separator, separated the white from the yolk and mixed Emma a quick eggwhite scramble. She dusted the yolk over the white, Emma needed the protein, but she remembered how many women limited the times of day they consumed eggs during pregnancy, saving it only for dinner. Perhaps there had been something to the process.

Emma emerged from the bathroom, wiping her face with a washcloth just as Henry finished his food. “Get your schoolbooks,” Regina told him.

He gingerly hugged Emma as he moved around her to go to his bedroom.

“Good morning, Emma,” Regina stated.

“Hi,” Emma said, and she sounded almost exactly as she had that day three years ago, standing on her front walk, having just been unceremoniously introduced by Henry before he ran to his room.

“Try this.” Regina held out the small glass of guava juice. “I’d suggest something lighter, but I think you’ll find water too unpalatable.”

“Sweet tends to turn my stomach faster.” Emma sighed.

“We’ll water it down. You need the natural sugars, and I’ve made you an egg.” Emma definitely frowned. “It’s just the white, with a bare bit of the yolk protein, very light.”

Emma took the small egg cautiously while Regina added chilled water from a water bottle in the refrigerator to the glass of juice. when it was barely a translucent white, she stopped. “That should do it.”

Emma sipped at the juice then exhaled after a moment. Her hand went to her stomach but unclenched as she took another sip. Then another.

“Better?” Regina asked.

“Yeah.” Emma put down the glass, still half full for all that it was barely three ounces. She fished a fork out of a drawer and picked a tiny corner of the fluffy white egg. She pressed it through her lips and thoughtfully paused with the fork between her teeth. She then pursed her lips, but withdrew the fork and looked up at Regina. “Kinda bland.”

“You can spice it up with almost anything, just keep it simple. Mustard was apparently popular.”

“In the Enchanted Forest?”

Regina nodded.

“How do you know so much about this?”

“Women shared this sort of thing. It was considered common knowledge.”

“Most of the women I knew… wouldn’t share anything helpful like this.” Emma finished the egg tiny bite by bite as she talked.

“I, you know where I was when…” Emma shook herself. “Anyway, other than the occasional advice for back pain, and maybe someone who let me take a load off on their bench in the prison lunchroom, I was kinda… the pariah.”

Regina found herself listening, feeling as if she was almost hearing Emma for the first time. It wasn’t until Emma reached for Henry’s bowl and walked that to the sink along with her empty egg plate, that Regina realized she had leaned on the counter next to it, resting her chin on her hand simply watching Emma eat.

She had heard that pregnant women had a glow about them. She had never seen such a thing, those women around her never pregnant, and though she had seen Snow pregnant, she was unable to compare Emma’s radiance to that of her mother’s. In some ways it was easy not to think of Emma as Snow’s child, since the blonde was all light coloring and golden sun-kissed skin where Snow was, well, midnight black hair with skin as pale as her name.

“You look…” Regina bit her lip. “Better,” she added when Emma turned and green eyes pinned her with puzzlement.

“Thanks. I probably slept about four hours last night.”

“But not straight through,” Regina guessed. Emma shook her head. “You could lie down. I can take Henry to school.”

“Actually, now I’m kind of hungry.”

Regina nodded. “What would you like?”

“It must be the power of suggestion,” Emma muttered.

“What?”

“You know, I shoulda guessed Henry’d end up being your kid.”

The persistent non sequitur confused Regina further. “What? Why?”

“For the last three months I was pregnant with the kid, I craved anything and everything apples.”

Hearing the light tone bolstering a surprisingly happy smile on Emma’s face, Regina felt herself chuckling. “I see. And what are you interested in right now?”

“Applesauce,” Emma stated, in a voice filled with both bemusement and annoyance. “With cinnamon.”

Now Regina openly laughed. “I’ll bring some freshly made from my tree when I come again.” She reached out and touched Emma’s forearm which was holding up Emma’s head over the counter. Emma smiled at her; she smiled back.

They both were still smiling when Henry returned, now wearing his backpack on one shoulder.

“Both shoulders,” Emma and Regina cautioned him simultaneously.

Rolling his eyes at their stereophonic mothering, Henry nevertheless adjusted his pack while Regina grabbed her purse from the counter. She followed him out through the apartment door.

Emma walked to the window and watched mother and son emerge onto the street from the front of the building. As she turned around, she noticed Regina’s coat still on her sofa. Picking it up, she studied it, wondering if she should call out that Regina had forgotten it.

Surely the woman would know.

She sat down, holding the coat in her lap, her mind whirling as she contemplated the odd tastes of not-quite-plain egg, the barely sweet watered down guava juice, the touch of a brown gaze above a warm smile, the sound of Regina’s laughter, and the quiver in Emma’s stomach, which didn’t seem to be queasiness anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

Emma was sleeping beneath the coat when Regina let herself back into Emma’s apartment a few hours later.

Pausing in the doorway, having been planning to call out as she collected her coat, Regina froze with her hand on the door, captured by the gentleness in Emma’s sleeping features. Something indefinably warm and thick suffused Regina’s chest with the realization that the other woman was using her coat as a blanket.

She stepped out of the doorway, closing the wood into the frame with care to make as little noise as possible. A check of Emma before moving again found she had been successful; the blonde continue to sleep. The tension from the morning’s nausea had finally fled, the woman’s smooth forehead drawing Regina’s fingers.

Freezing a scant inch from touching the skin and brushing aside a golden lock of hair, Regina felt the heat in her face and closed her eyes, closed her fingers into a fist, and backed up slowly.

When she felt she was a safe distance away, and her heart rate had returned to normal, she called out softly, “Emma? Emma?”

Lashes fluttered, and the body on the sofa twisted and stretched beneath Regina’s jacket. Then fingers pulled the jacket closer into Emma’s body.

She wanted the jacket, but Emma’s comfort made her reluctant to reclaim her property. She heard the clocktower strike noon.

That woke Emma.

Green eyes were suddenly staring at Regina, filled with alarm, then puzzlement, then surprise, and finally coherence. Emma snapped upright and shoved the jacket off her shoulders. “Uh, um. Sorry. Hey, was gonna call --”

Regina gently took the jacket, letting her hands cup Emma’s before separating. “It’s all right, dear. Whatever works. Have you had anything more to eat?”

Emma looked down at herself the woman's forehead crinkling once more. Then slowly she shook her head. “No, I… I fell asleep here right after you left with Henry. What time is it?”

“Well, then that’s quite some sleep. Obviously you needed it. It’s noon. Would you like some lunch?”

“Uh, yeah, I…” Emma rose to her feet, still obviously a little groggy if her reaching for the side of the couch to steady herself was any indication. Regina stepped back and held out her hand. Without thinking twice, Emma reached for the hand, their palms sliding warmly together. The rough skin made Regina squeeze slightly, and drew Emma’s attention to their fingers, which made her quickly withdraw from the touch. “Uh, sorry.”

“Lunch?” Regina said, ignoring the awkwardness.

“I’ll figure out something in the kitchen.”

“Lead the way,” Regina said. Though she had her doubts about the results she wasn’t about to offer up a snarky comment. For some reason, she only liked it when Emma was capable of snarking back. Right now, the blonde seemed too tender for that.

Emma finally came up with ingredients for a simple salad and some taco meat, which she wrapped in tortillas, and served with picante. Regina sat at the kitchen table next to Emma.

“It’s not much,” Emma remarked as she lifted her wrap in two hands.

Regina had been cutting into hers with a knife and fork and just shook her head because her mouth was full. But the bemusement remained when she finally cleared her palate and responded, “It’s not bad.”

Emma chuckled; Regina felt the warm knot in her stomach loosen slightly and she smiled back.

###


	3. Craving Connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month 3. Henry and his two moms start regularly sharing meals and movie night.

Emma felt a flutter in her stomach as she leaned into the refrigerator to retrieve the large mason jar of applesauce. With a smile as she tucked her free hand protectively over the sensation as she read the label “From the kitchen of Regina Mills, Storybrooke.” In the midst of retrieving a spoon, the front doorbell rang.

Scooping a bit from the bottom of the jar, Emma popped the spoon in her mouth before walking quickly to her front door. She unlocked the bolt and turned the knob. Henry’s smile caught her first, but she found Regina’s right behind him, the brunette woman’s hand on their son’s shoulder. Emma smiled around the spoon and pulled it out. “Perfect timing!”

Henry kissed her cheek and then ducked around her, racing to his room with his bag.

“Couldn’t wait to have dinner with us?” Regina asked.

“This is just a snack. The Yankee roast has been in the cooker all day. Smells are driving me crazy.”

“Good or bad?”

“It’s weird. A lot of smells aren’t so good, yeah, but this is good.” Emma took Regina’s coat from her shoulders and put it over the arm of the sofa. “You want some wine.”

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“No, but I thought you might like some. I got a bottle from the store today.”

Another flutter went through Emma’s stomach at the woman’s smile. She tucked her hand against it.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I… Just a twinge.”

“Something feels wrong?” Regina asked. Emma was drawn closer by the concern in brown eyes.

“No, it’s more like a flutter. Nothing’s gonna be moving really for a couple months. I figure I’m just hungry.”

“Are you sure?” Emma was suddenly looking at the top of Regina’s head as the woman dropped her gaze to stare at Emma’s stomach. It felt a little awkward.

“Yeah, yeah,” Emma nudged Regina back, but the woman’s hand brushed hers and then warmly drifted across her stomach just before they parted. The stronger flutter in her abdomen made her eyes widen suddenly. “Oh.”

Regina snapped upright again. “Sit down. I’ll finish the meal.”

Emma shook her head. “But it’s…”

“Have a seat. Henry and I can do this.”

Regina entered the kitchen before Emma could say anything more.

“You’re almost out of the applesauce,” Regina noted.

“Uh, yeah.” Emma sat down on the sofa and looked at her spoon in her hand. “I was finishing it just now.”

“Directly from the jar?”

“Yeah, well, Henry seems to think it’s only for me. He won’t touch it.”

Regina chuckled. “Really? So how is it that it’s only been a month and you’ve finished four quart jars?”

“It’s really good,” Emma protested. She watched Regina’s cheeks turn red at the compliment.

“Well, since you’re finishing it, here’s the jar,” Regina brought it out, lifting a spoon herself to her lips. She hummed around the silverware and Emma raised an eyebrow. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“Got any more?”

“I’ll wash the empty jars and return with some later this week, all right?”

Emma’s smile widened in gratitude. Regina left her with the remains of the jar and disappeared back into the kitchen just as Henry returned from his room.

“What’s dinner? That smells great.”

“Emma made pot roast,” Regina said.

“With onions and baby red potatoes?” Henry asked, looking at Emma then his mom. Regina had lifted the top of the slow cooker.

With a nod, Emma confirmed his guess. “I found baby carrots, too, at the farmer’s market.”

Henry smiled. “You enjoyed those in New York,” he said.

“Yeah, though here they haggle more easily. Hubbard gave up two pounds for a song.”

“A song?” Regina asked.

Henry explained, “It means really cheap.”

“No,” Emma explained crinkling her nose and recalling the nursery rhyme she’d attempted badly but that had put the broadest smile on Barbara Hubbard’s wrinkled face. “No, I really mean _a song_.”

Regina laughed; Henry stared, then snorted. “Will you sing it later?” he asked.

“Oh, please, if she has half the tin-ear of her mother it’s bound to be the most off-key thing you’ve ever…”

“I’ll have you know, she loved it.”

“The woman’s deaf, darling,” Regina replied.

Emma’s eyes widened; Regina blinked. “Oh.”

Even at this distance, Emma saw Regina swallow as she backed away from the counter and returned to plating their dinners.

Staring into her now-empty applesauce jar, Emma sucked pensively on the spoon. Uh, yeah. Through the glass she saw the curve of her waist, distorted. She actually could believe she was pregnant now. The spoon rattled in the neck as she set the glass jar down on the coffee table in front of the sofa and returned her attention to her belly. Spreading her fingers over the tail of her baseball t-shirt, she bit her lip.

Memories of laying in her prison bunk doing the same thirteen years ago flowed over her mind. It tripped her up like rocks in a stream though and she quickly pulled her hands away when she heard footsteps. Her head jerked up to find Regina leaning forward with a wineglass.

“It’s just guava juice,” Regina said, “but I thought you should consider it special.”

Emma took the stemware, her fingers sweeping the outside of Regina’s hand as the other woman released it into her possession. “You have something?” she asked.

“The wine is lovely,” Regina lifted her glass, filled with a shimmering maroon-colored wine, in a toast. “It should go perfectly with the roast.”

“I’m glad,” Emma said, leaning forward to clink the rims together gingerly. She smiled at the resonating vibration and lifted her glass to her own lips, smiling at Regina across the rim. The brown gaze remained on her until their glasses lowered.

“Dinner’s served,” Regina said. “Unless you’d like to eat here?”

“No, I’ll come to the table.”

“All right.” Emma found the woman’s hand reaching toward her and took it without a second thought, using it to rise from the sofa.

Shoulder to shoulder, Emma and Regina entered the kitchen. Henry was already seated, pulling a napkin into his lap. He looked up at both of them and grinned broadly. Emma nodded at him and sat, and watched Regina sit at the other end of the table. She waited until Regina lifted her fork to do the same. “Enjoy,” she said.

Eating at a measured pace, paying attention to her body’s signals when it was full, Emma watched the other two diners at her table. Henry ate quickly, scooping rather than forking the food into his mouth. He didn’t particularly seem to care whether he was consuming a bit of roast, a bit of potato, or carrots or onions. He said it was delicious, but Emma wasn’t convinced of his judgment.

Regina on the other hand, lingered over bites, forking pieces separately and then in small pairings, as if tasting how each mixed and mingled with its flavors.

After clearing her palate with a sip of wine, Regina said, “Delicious.”

Emma felt ready to burst with pride. The effort had been worth her panic about whether to caramelize the onions before they went into the pot or not. She decided to share her decision. “I decided to caramelize the onions before they went into the pot, I used a little brown sugar, and some of the onion soup mix.”

“You’ll have to show me sometime,” Regina commented easily, and Emma’s stomach fluttered again. This time she recognized her own nervousness. But she still quieted the motion with a palm across her belly and smiled, feeling deeply pleased, committing the happy moment to memory.

 

* * *

 

 

Henry washed dishes after the meal, and Regina supervised, having pushed Emma to select the evening’s movie. “Hey, Mom?” Henry asked, still up to his elbows in the hot soapy water.

“Yes, Henry?” She stored the meal in several single serve containers for Emma’s lunch.

“You gonna head out?”

Regina started to shake her head, but then stopped. “I wasn’t, but is that… would you prefer to be with Emma by yourself?”

“It’s… No, it’s okay with me. It’s just… I figured you just kinda… I don’t need you to stick around. She’s doing better, so I guess the stuff she was dealing with has kinda eased off.”

“Stress can make it worse, I think. You helping her out, I think it helps.”

“Me?” Henry shook his head. “It’s all you. It’s kinda cool.”

Regina stacked some of the containers on a refrigerator shelf then put the last two in the freezer. “You’re all right with Emma’s … that you’re going to have a sibling?”

“Better than being a nephew to a baby,” Henry said honestly.

Regina gave him a one-armed hug and kissed his temple. “What do you think we ought to have with the movie?”

“Ma has some ice cream.”

“I’ll see if she’s in the mood for that,” Regina said and stepped out of the kitchen. Emma was flipping through television channels using the remote. “Have you decided, dear?”

There was an odd shine to Emma’s eyes as she shook her head. “It looks like sappy romantic stuff, or sequel violence city.” Regina tilted her head in concern as Emma wiped her eyes with the back of her hand holding the remote. “Kinda emotional.”

“It’s all right,” Regina said. “There’s plenty of tissues.”

“I’d kinda like something humorous,” Emma said. “But it’s almost always kinda borderline for the kid’s viewing, you know?”

Regina nodded. “Any ideas?”

“One of my foster parents’ go-to was always Disney films for us kids, but, yeah well…” Emma gestured between the two of them. “No.”

Regina laughed. “It wouldn’t bother me.”

Emma’s head tilted a little and she looked at the television before looking back at Regina. “How about ‘The Fox and the Hound’?”

“I don’t believe I’ve seen it.”

“All right.” Emma flipped her attention back to the remote, pressed a series of buttons and put the remote on the cushion beside her. “Disney it is. Was that what you came out for?”

“Oh. No.” Regina was surprised she had completely forgotten her original thought, too engrossed in the conversation with Emma. She glanced over her shoulder and then back to Emma. “Henry says you have ice cream. Would that be a suitable movie snack?”

“A little bit,” Emma said and, again, Regina watched the blonde’s fingers drift over her lower abdomen. “I’m kinda full.”

“All right.” Regina resolved to not serve herself. If Emma couldn’t finish her scoop, Regina would. She returned to the kitchen to find Henry already pulling the ice cream bucket from the freezer. “Emma’ll have one scoop. Keep it small.”

“Cool. All right.” Their son started to pull down three bowls.

“Just the two,” Regina said. “I’m not having any.”

“OK.” He served himself two scoops, and added chocolate syrup from the refrigerator, before serving Emma’s single scoop. Regina brought out Emma’s as Henry flopped onto an overstuffed chair at the far end of the living room with his bowl. He flung a leg over the arm.

“Henry?” Regina asked.

“Oh, it’s all right, Regina. You can put your feet up on the sofa, too. I don’t have showpiece furniture.”

Regina kept her feet firmly on the floor despite Emma’s sudden hand to her knee. “But it’s not…”

“Nah, it’s not, but it’s okay.” Emma shrugged. She leaned back into the cushions herself and Regina settled next to her, passing the ice cream bowl.

Emma held it in her hands through most of the first scenes. She nibbled a little after the old woman in the movie took in Todd, the orphaned fox.

Regina found Emma’s head resting on her shoulder, the spoon stuck upside down between pale pink lips by the time Copper, the hound pup, went with his master and the older hunting dog, on his first hunting trip.

Feeling a shift in the body against hers, Regina turned to see Emma’s face turning into Regina’s shoulder. The shine was back in green eyes. Onscreen, Todd was looking forlornly out at the road where Copper, his hound dog friend, had disappeared. The widow woman patted Todd on the head. Regina’s fingers twitched with the urge to slide aside a loose lock of Emma’s hair that had fallen across her eyes. She rolled her shoulder; Emma sat up and moved until they no longer shared the same sofa cushion. Regina’s breath escaped in a sigh at the sense of loss.

Regina’s heart pounded through the confrontation on the waterfall. Grateful for the lowered lighting after Henry had switched off all but the night lighting in the kitchen, she surreptitiously passed tissues to Emma and the blonde’s head sank closer and closer to her hip as she kept turning away from the screen, sniffling.

Her hand rested on a lithe shoulder, circling slowly, absently soothing as she might have done when Henry was a toddler. The action was very nearly automatic. It wasn’t until Emma turned onto her back, and Regina’s hand slipped across ribs to rest on a gentle slope, that she recognized what she had been doing. She started to lift her hand away only to find Emma tugging it down, across her belly.

The empty bowl -- Emma had actually consumed all the ice cream herself -- lay abandoned on the low table as Emma resettled her head against Regina’s thigh, stretching out on the sofa cushions.

Onscreen the two animals, the now-grown fox and the full-fledged hunting dog, grudgingly each gave a nod and turned from one another, each disappearing back into his new, separate world. Living separate lives, each indelibly changed, and yet unable to coexist, from the years spent together. Regina swallowed; too easily she thought of the moment she had turned away from Henry and Emma as they drove away from Storybrooke.

“Is Ma asleep?” Henry’s whisper reached Regina just under the music of the closing credits.

Regina was unsure how to answer. She didn’t think so, but the darkness cloaking them prevented any easy answer from evidence.

“No, I’m just relaxed,” Emma murmured. Awkwardly she pushed up; Regina felt the other woman’s hands pressing first into her thigh and then moving away to cushion as she straightened. “You ready for bed, kid?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. Brush your teeth. We’ll be along in a minute,” Emma instructed. She eased away from Regina and reached for the ice cream bowl. Regina swiped it up first. “Hey.”

“I have it. You relax. Perhaps you should go to your room also.”

“I will. In a bit. I just…” Emma brushed her own hair out of her eyes, lifting her green gaze to Regina’s. “Thanks for letting me lean on you.”

Regina swallowed and shrugged. “Not a problem.”

“Anyway, I’m glad you stayed. Sorry for the waterworks.”

“As I said, hormones undoubtedly.” Regina cupped the empty bowl in both hands as she watched Emma on the sofa. “It was a lovely film.”

Emma wiped her eyes with more tissues then blew her nose. When she looked around for a way to discard the mess, Regina quickly spotted and retrieved a tiny can from just out of sight on the left side of the sofa. “Here.”

“Thanks. Why don’t you go tuck Henry in?”

“I should just go. It’s late.”

“Nah, I’m sure he’d like that.”

Regina nodded. She put down the trash bin and retreated, placing Emma’s bowl in the sink beside Henry’s. Glancing back into the living room, she watched Emma curl into the arm of the sofa opposite the way she had been laying during the film.

She announced herself in the hallway leading to her son’s room here in Emma’s home. “Henry? I’m coming to say good night.”

“Hey, Mom,” his voice reached her from the bedroom. She stopped in the doorway and leaned on the jamb.

“You didn’t forget anything at the house?” she checked.

“Nah, I got everything. Pretty much two sets.”

Regina nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sleep well, Henry.”

“I will. Emma gone to her room?”

“Not yet.”

“She gets really emotional, huh?”

“You mean she wasn’t before?” Regina quipped. She was amused by the realization that Henry rolled his eyes in exactly the same manner she was wont to do. She nodded. “Yes, she is. But a lot is happening in her body. I’ve been reading a bit. I know you and I haven’t had to have this conversation, but…” She trailed off, looking over her shoulder. “If you have questions…?”

“I know where kids come from, Mom. It’s just… weird, when it’s your own… ma, y’know?”

“So we’ll experience it with Emma, all right?” Regina said.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Henry laid back on his bed and pulled the covers to his chest. “Good night, Mom.”

She kissed her fingers and used them to brush his hair from his face. “Good night, Henry. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Regina quietly closed Henry’s door and returned to the living room. Emma had fallen back to sleep in the short time. Now she lay curled in what looked to be a rather awkward position against the corner cushions of the sofa. She went to wake Emma, but as the woman’s hand slid down her arm absently aware of being repositioned, Regina decided it was not important that Emma move, only that she be comfortable. She tucked blonde locks behind an ear and arranged the blanket Emma had already pulled onto herself more snugly around the woman’s body. Her hand brushed Emma’s belly in the act of smoothing the blanket, and Emma moved slightly, murmuring unintelligibly.

“Good night, Emma.” Regina absently brushed her fingers over her own lips before smoothing the worry lines of Emma’s forehead. “Sleep well.”

###


	4. Look Who's Talking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month four. Regina finds Emma at the doctor and, afterward, she brings Emma to Mifflin Street for dinner and movie with Henry and herself. Familiarity is beginning to show in emotional moments for both women.

Regina was just entering the hospital as Emma emerged from an examination room. Snow followed, reaching for Emma’s arm. The blonde pulled away from her mother’s touch. It was then Regina saw that Emma’s eyes were red-rimmed. She’d been crying. Immediately Regina felt her heart rate speed up as any number of reasons for the emotions occurred to her.

“Emma, baby,” Snow pleaded. “Are you sure you should be up right now?”

Regina started to move out of sight, not wanting to involve herself in the drama between mother and daughter, but then Emma’s attempt to adjust her appearance twisted her head around enough that her gaze found Regina. The instant relief and plea in green eyes rooted her to the spot.

“Regina?” Snow noticed her. “What are you doing here?”

Henry had told Regina about Emma’s appointment, but a glance at Emma made Regina inclined not to say so. She tucked her hands into her coat pocket. “Hospital board meeting.”

Emma looked down and away, but not before Regina caught the way the woman bit her bottom lip, clearly aware of the lie and amused by it.

“Oh,” Snow tucked her hand around Emma’s arm again. “Come on, Emma, we’ll go meet David for dinner.”

Emma took Snow’s hand off her arm and shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just head home. Rest.”

Snow looked about to protest when Dr. Whale came out of the examination room, tucking his stethoscope into his medical coat pocket. “Still here, Emma? You wanna wait for the test results?”

“They can come back that quickly?” Snow asked.

Whale shrugged. “About twenty minutes. I’ll go get them.”

Emma swallowed then nodded. “All right. I’ll wait.”

“You’ll call me?” Snow asked. “I have to get back to Neal.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll call,” Emma assured. With palpable relief, Emma walked to the seating area and settled gingerly, balancing her weight onto both hands on the arms of the chair, before lowering herself onto the seat. She still winced and, once down, settled a hand over the now easily visible pooch above her lap.

Snow looked from Emma to Regina, then to Whale, and finally back to Regina with a clear look of consternation, before going over and kissing Emma on the top of her head, smoothing her hand down her hair and walking away.

Regina indecisively looked at Emma until she heard Whale’s heavy footsteps. Then she quickly followed the doctor down the corridor. “Dr. Whale,” she prompted.

“Yes, your majesty?” he sighed. “I don’t have time to do your bidding today.”

“Is Emma all right?”

“You know she’s my patient and I can’t tell you that,” he replied.

Regina bit back the almost instinctive threat. She was trying so hard not to be that person any more. She exhaled and tried reason. “If there’s something wrong, it will concern Henry. Therefore I need to know,” she stressed.

He stopped walking and studied her for a long silent moment. She set her jaw and stared right back. He shifted his weight on his feet and finally stepped back. “She had a bad reaction to the amnio test. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but…”

“But it could mean there’s a problem with the pregnancy,” Regina finished for him.

“Yes.”

Regina looked back down the hall where Emma waited then back to Whale. “What about medicine, or vitamins?”

“Medicine isn’t indicated. There's no signs of infection. She’s eating pretty healthfully, according to what she’s been telling me.”

“I was reading… Many women get prenatal vitamins.”

“I’ll discuss them with her,” Whale said. “If the tests warrant it.”

Regina nodded. “I’ll pay for them,” she said earnestly.

He blinked, but then he nodded. “Fine.” He started to walk away; Regina followed.

He stopped and studied her. “The tests,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but I will bring them to Emma,” he stated firmly.

Regina pursed her lips and frowned. She wanted to know what was happening with Emma and the pregnancy. “All right,” she conceded though with an ungracious tone.

He walked away, alone this time. Regina walked back out to the seating area, studying Emma as she approached the chairs. The blonde was looking down at herself, watching her own fingers slip uneasily over and around in circles on her abdomen. Her expression was pensive, clearly worried about what the tests Whale was bringing would say.

“Everything will be fine,” Regina said pulling herself into a seat beside Emma.

“You’re a terrible liar, Regina,” Emma said without looking up.

“You’re not even looking at me.”

“Don’t have to. You’re not one for pep talks. Common sense. If you are trying that tactic, something’s really off.”

“Fine.” Regina changed topics. “What happened in the test?”

“I got these really shitty cramps.” Emma winced with the memory. “It felt like labor. Scared the crap out of me. Whale withdrew some fluid.”

“Was that expected?”

“He said it was. But he was looking at the stuff kinda funny.”

“You’re only the second pregnancy he’s handled.”

“After Snow’s, yeah, I know. Frozen time and all that.”

“When you find out the results, I’ll take us home to Henry,” Regina said.

“You don’t have to stick around.”

“Our son is expecting you at dinner tonight. And I won’t have you disappoint him.”

Emma straightened a bit in her seat, not answering.

Regina looked up at the sound of footfalls in the corridor. Seeing a nurse, she looked away.

“Now that’s the straight talk I expect from you.” Regina looked at Emma, who had her eyes closed. “Thanks,” Emma added.

 

* * *

 

Emma had stopped looking up at each sound of footfalls, so she was startled when she felt Regina straighten beside her and heard Whale’s voice almost directly above.

“I have the test results,” he said.

Brushing her hair back, Emma sat up straighter and worked to feel more calm than she felt as she spoke. “So, what’s the verdict?”

Whale looked at the report in his hand. “I think stress just brought on the contractions. You’ve got to find ways to manage that or it will affect the child,” he admonished. “And you’re a little anemic. So I’m going to recommend a vitamin supplement.” He looked at Regina then cleared his throat and continued, “The pH in utero is a little out of normal range, so I’d like to do another test, probably in a week or so.”

“Will that harm her?” Emma asked.

“You know the sex?” Regina asked, sounding surprised.

“No, just I can’t do the whole him, her thing,” Emma confessed. “Probably not a good idea though, huh?”

“Probably not, but…”

“May I finish the report?” Whale interjected.

Emma asked, “There’s something else?”

“We did not find any genetic abnormalities,” Whale finished. “He or she is healthy, if a little underweight for this far into the process.”

“Underweight?” Emma looked down at her stomach. “So that’s more me than…”

“Than him or her, yes. It should be fine though. This next month should see a lot of changes.”

“All right.” Emma pushed out of the chair. “Thanks,” she told him.

“I’ll schedule your next visit, for the pH retest, and we’ll go from there,” Whale said.

“Fine. Just leave a message on my cell.”

Regina stepped back to let Emma precede her from the hospital. She glanced at Whale, who hadn’t moved away. “If that’s everything? We have to get home to Henry.”

If Whale thought it odd that Regina spoke for both of them, he didn’t say anything. “Yeah, that’s everything. Good night, Emma.”

“Night, doc.”

Emma felt Regina just behind her shoulder all the way out to the parking lot. “I’m over here,” she said.

“I can drive us,” Regina said.

“I’m not an invalid,” Emma snapped.

“No, you’re right. You’re not but we are both going to the same place. And I am not getting into that rattle-trap you refer to as a vehicle.”

Emma laughed; it felt good. “Fine. But you’ll have to bring me back here to collect mine tonight.”

Regina said nothing to that. She pointed to the passenger side of her Mercedes. “Get in.”

Emma slid into the passenger side, admitting -- to herself mind you, Regina would be unbearably smug otherwise -- that the cushioning of the high-end vehicle’s seats did have a comfort advantage over the worn springs of her own car.

“Buckle up,” Regina said, reaching for her own seatbelt over her left shoulder.

When Emma had snapped the latch closed on her belt, Regina started the car, driving the handful of blocks to Mifflin Street.

 

* * *

 

 

Henry ran out to greet them when he saw the Mercedes pull into the driveway. Before Regina had the vehicle entirely turned off and safely secured, he was yanking open Emma’s door. “Hey, you made it for dinner!”

“Told you I would, kid,” Emma said. She followed him, and Regina, up the walk into the house. Regina took her coat, hanging it next to her own in the foyer closet.

“I picked out a great movie for tonight,” he said. “Look Who’s Talking.”

Emma groaned. “Seriously, kid?”

“What’s the matter with it?” Regina asked. “It is narrated by a baby.”

“Yeah, a baby,” Emma said. “With your sass.”

Regina’s eyes widened. “Perhaps we should reconsider,” she said to Henry.

“It’s a PG-13 movie,” Henry protested. “And I am 13.”

“All right, Henry,” Regina agreed. “I’ll allow it.”

Inside the house, Emma accompanied Regina to the kitchen while Henry went to put in the movie. “I don’t require any help, Emma,” Regina said. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I’m over here almost constantly. I think it’s time I stopped being a guest. Give me a job. I’ll peel potatoes.”

“I’m not making potatoes,” Regina replied with a smile.

“Sass I tell you.” Emma rolled her eyes; after her morning stressing through the test, this felt incredibly normal. “You know what I meant.”

Regina nodded toward the refrigerator as she continued to fill a pot with water. “If you’d like a salad, you’ll find ingredients in the hydrator.”

“My taste buds are kinda picky,” Emma said. “You okay with just carrots and romaine?”

“Not even tomatoes?”

“I know. No pizza. I suppose that’s why some of my nutrition has been off.”

“Who’d have thought you need pizza to have a balanced diet?”

“That’s my sassy ‘gina,” Emma said. When Regina shot her a glare, Emma blithely snapped up a carrot and trapped it between her teeth as she set up a cutting board.

 

* * *

 

 

“It has ice cream,” Regina pointed out.

“With pie,” Emma protested with emphasis, poking her spoon at the contents below her vanilla ice cream in her dish. “And no chocolate,” she pouted, shooting a glance toward Henry who already had a chocolate smear on his chin.

“It’s crumble, and it’s not pie.” Regina leaned in close and smiled. “It’s apples. And cinnamon.”

Emma’s eyes darted to the bowl and Regina smirked as the blonde dug in with her spoon. The look of pleasure that stole over Emma’s face after she pulled a bite into her mouth was almost embarrassing to witness. The accompanying sound did nothing to dispel the thought. It seemed… sexual and made Regina squirm in her seat and return her attention to the opening scenes of the movie.

However, she felt only more strange with Emma moaning in dietary pleasure against her shoulder, and the movie soundtrack playing a strange song with the refrain “I get around.” Emma’s chuckle was throaty and made Regina squirm again. Over all this a male voice started excitedly talking, apparently one among the flood of tadpole-shaped figures racing through a whitish-pink cavern. This was fertilization as a movie would depict it, she realized, watching the excited wriggling as one finally pierced the egg. Swallowing down her instinct to stand and turn it off, Regina instead looked toward Henry who was propped on his elbows eating his own dish of ice cream and crumble. His expression held interest, but not any more or less than had it been two of his favorite X-Men having a conversation.

He caught her watching him. “I’m good, Mom.”

She smiled and let herself lean back a bit in the sofa cushions. This seemed to give Emma permission to rest her head on Regina’s shoulder. The woman still languorously spooned her ice cream and crumble with pleasurable sounds. Regina closed her eyes in surprising contentment.

The struggles and questions of the woman onscreen captured Regina’s attention, and she glanced toward Emma, wondering what Emma was thinking. It wasn’t hard to imagine she was both remembering her pregnancy with Henry and thinking how she wanted this one to turn out differently as the blonde alternately glanced toward Henry then Regina and finally stroked her abdomen, which was really quite noticeable now late into her fourth month.

Regina turned back to the screen to watch the angry conversations between the mother-to-be and the father, overlaid by the fervent wishing of the unborn child. She laid her hand over Emma’s on the woman’s thigh, too easily hearing the “please let it work out” wishes in her head in Emma’s voice.

The dessert dishes laid empty on the low coffee table by the time little Mikey was born onscreen. Hearing a faint sniffle, Regina looked over to see tears slipping silently over the blonde’s fair cheeks. A glance toward Henry assured Regina that he could not see them. Not quite sure why Emma was crying, but not begrudging her the emotional reaction, whether from memories or wishes, Regina tugged the hand curled under Emma’s face into her own.

Emma slowly pulled away, curling up, eyes still on the television screen, in the sofa corner away from Regina. Her feet pulled up, and only because Regina cupped her hand around an ankle did Emma not pull further into herself. Henry rotated around on his chair, feet over one arm, hands crossed behind his head. He chuckled from time to time at Mikey’s commentary, and the haplessness of Mollie as a new mom. Regina, too, found amusement as she recalled her own early days learning to be a good mother to Henry.

Henry looked to her once after she laughed at some mishap onscreen. She felt the heat in her cheeks that suggested her coloring had heightened and knew he could tell. His smile broadened impossibly further, eyes bright and twinkling. She warmed inside, not from embarrassment, but pride. She did become his mother. And she did a good job. She squeezed Emma’s foot in her hand, getting a curious look from the blonde. She smiled at Emma: And so will you. She didn’t speak aloud although she meant it with every fiber of her being.

The smile Emma offered in return was tremulous; Regina gave her foot a reassuring rub. Emma’s eyes rolled back in her head. Regina chuckled then returned her gaze to the screen while she continued surreptitiously to rub Emma’s sock-covered feet.

When the movie credits began to roll, Henry moved, taking up the remote and turning off the television.

“All done?” Regina asked. Normally he liked to watch credits to the end.

“Yeah. I’ll head up to bed. See you in the morning.”

Regina started to her feet only to feel Emma’s feet still across her lap.

Henry stopped her moving Emma’s feet. “Nah, you stay. She looks comfortable.”

Keeping her voice low, Regina shifted out from beneath the sleeping woman’s weight. “She’ll still be comfortable, but I need to get up and put the dishes away.”

“You gonna send her back to the apartment?”

“I’m certain she would prefer her own bed.”

Regina nodded to Henry; she wouldn’t push Emma out if she wasn’t awake enough to drive, but she knew that had to be Emma’s decision.

“Good night, Mom.”

She accepted his hug and kissed the side of his head. “Good night, Henry.”

“Night, kid,” Emma murmured from the sofa.

“Night, Ma.” Emma smiled sleepily into the cushion at Henry’s words, and was deeply asleep within seconds of Henry’s foot hitting the stairs.

As Regina gathered the dishes, Emma stirred again. “I c’n he’p.”

“Not necessary. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

“I’ll get my…stuff ...go,” Emma said, her voice clearly trailing with her fleeting consciousness.

Regina didn’t answer, already striding into the kitchen. When she returned to the living room, dishes stowed away in the dishwasher and counters wiped, Emma had only moved to the other end of the sofa and now laid face down into the cushions, one foot on the floor, one boot on, the other fallen from her slack hand.

Tugging the one boot back off, Regina adjusted the heavily sleeping woman fully onto the sofa, lifting and arranging her arms and legs. She lifted a blanket from the back of the sofa and tucked it in around Emma’s shoulders and thighs, smoothing it over Emma’s belly.

Henry stood at the bottom of the stairs when Regina looked up. He wore his pajamas and a broad smile.

Regina looked down at Emma and tucked a lock of golden hair out of the woman's eyes and behind her ear. “Good night, Emma.”

“Thanks, R’gina.”

 

 


	5. My Gift to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month 5. Emma's having sexy dreams. Snow gives Emma a surprise baby shower. Regina and Emma watch Henry play soccer and, it turns out, Regina has a present for Emma too. Hormonal and emotional upheaval is everywhere.

_The warm press of a body to her back, a hand sliding over her heated skin, down, cupping, fingers entering where she needed them most. “Oh, oh god, yes!” Emma squeezed her eyes shut tighter, curling, pressing, straining. “Please,” she whispered tightly strung as a bowstring, begging for release._

_Warm breath whispered across her cheek. There was pressure between her legs. Her toes curled. She jerked into it, finally gasping and crying out in relief. “Oh, god, yeah.”_

Emma sighed and opened her eyes. But she sighed again in frustration this time rather than fulfillment.   _God, no._ Daylight poured between the sides of partially closed curtains. The warmth on her cheek had been a sunbeam. She withdrew her hand -- not that of a phantom lover -- from between her thighs and pushed her sweaty body away from the large pillow she had wrapped herself around in her sleep.

Her own hand skimmed her sensitive breasts when she tried to reach across her chest to pull her clock forward. “Damn it,” she muttered as the time came into view, she was late. She had forgotten to set the alarm again. Grabbing her phone from the bedside table, she punched in the number to the station.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, without preamble. She hung up without waiting for a response from whoever had answered.

This need for more sleep was really ruining her work schedule. This would be the third time this week she was late starting patrol.

Thanks to the lemon ginger iced tea recipe from Regina, morning sickness was a thing of the past. Emma slipped out of bed. Her sex-damp fingers went under the waterflow first before she grabbed a washcloth for her face and neck. Her arousal, however, lingered and she couldn’t escape the need for a cold shower, jilling herself with her head pressed into her forearm against the tiles while her fingers again wrestled another orgasm from her body. Damn hormones were a riotous mess.

She woke almost every morning with her own hand between her thighs, while dreams of a faceless phantom lover faded from her mind. But her lover always turned out to be a warm blanket or a sofa cushion, or her overstuffed pillow.

A week ago it had happened when she awoke at Regina’s, following a movie night. Wrapped in a blanket that felt like a cross between satin and clouds, Emma was struggling to wake up her brain when she heard sounds from the kitchen. Cheeks flaring red hot, she had quickly stuffed her oversensitized body back into her jeans and shoes and dashed out of the mansion before Regina could find her.

Emma now tried to be in her own apartment to sleep. With her mornings back under control, she had also returned to sheriff duties, convincing David she could do her job.

Her calls consisted mostly of school crossing guard duties at the elementary school, and collecting truants for the junior high. It felt good to be out in Storybrooke’s streets, doing something useful, protecting the town and the people she had come to call home and family.

It wasn’t particularly strenuous, as it seemed most people just smiled at her and stopped doing whatever they weren’t supposed to be doing. The truants, even when she caught them out at the watering hole, waved, clambered ashore, dried and dressed and let her drive them back to the school yard. They high-fived her and filed past the principal who waved at Emma.

It was not quite noon when Emma slid back behind the cruiser’s wheel, and drove to Granny’s for a quick lunch. Her phone rang. “Sheriff,” she answered.

“We’ve got a report of trespassing.”

“What’s the location, David?”

“The farmhouse. Thought some of the truants might be playing where they shouldn’t.”

“I got those kids to school just a few minutes ago, but it could be someone else. I’ll be able to check it out in ten.”

“All right.”

Emma hung up and ordered a sandwich and soda to go. Ruby fixed the sandwich in record time and passed it over. “Hey, Rubes, you wanna come with?”

“Where?”

“Out to the farmhouse. Trespassing.”

“Gotcha. Sure. Hey, Gran, I’m gonna go with Ems,” Ruby called into the back. Emma didn’t hear Granny’s response, but figured, with Ruby already rounding the end of the counter, the older woman had grunted some sort of response to her granddaughter.

Ruby tossed her cloak over her shoulders and followed Emma to the cruiser.

As they approached the farmhouse ten minutes later, Emma spotted David’s truck. “Looks like he’s already here.”

“Who?”

“David.” Emma pointed out the truck parked alongside the house. “He called me about the trespassing.”

“Anyone living here since Zelena, you know?” Emma asked as they got out of the car.

“No clue. Not my usual run.”

Emma nodded. “OK. So probably not a great place for kids to hang out. Who knows what that witch left here. May be a big magic mess.”

Ruby shivered; Emma led the approach to the house. The front door opened. She backed up into Ruby, only to stop in surprise as she recognized, “David!”

“Yep. Glad you could make it.”

It took a moment for Emma’s eyes to adjust as she entered the house. Before she could fully do so, light and figures burst all around her. “Surprise!”

“What the--?” Emma stared at Snow, coming from behind a wall. Behind her, Granny and Leroy rose from behind a counter. Elsewhere around the spacious rooms, other Storybrooke citizens were coming to their feet and clapping.

“It’s your baby shower,” Snow said. “I know you said… Anyway, we’ve got presents and celebrating to do.”

“Snow. Mom.” Emma saw the cake, the streamers and balloons, and all the smiling faces. And burst into tears.

Snow’s face crumbled. David helped Emma sit down.

“Oh, hey, sister, don’t do that,” Leroy groused. “You got this.”

Emma wiped her eyes. “Guys, this is… really… great. But…” She saw a bassinet with a big gold bow on it and a mobile dangling above it. “All this stuff isn’t going to fit in the apartment.”

Shaking her head, Snow beamed. “The house is yours! We cleaned it up. For you and Henry, and the baby, and…” Snow trailed off. “Well, your family.”

“You expect me to live here?”

“Plenty of room. There’s land, and you can decorate it however,” Snow started to explain.

Emma burst to her feet. “Snow, _Zelena_ lived here! The Wicked _Fucking_ Witch lived _here_! Zelena almost _killed_ Gold, stole David’s sword, grabbed Regina’s heart, nearly killed _Regina_! How could you even entertain that I would _want_ to live _here_?

“It’s _miles_ from town which I police, so far from Henry’s _school_ ,” she added with a broad thrust of her hand.

“Your father and I renovated another place near here. We thought…”

“I _can’t_ live out here. I’m not homespun and hayseed, Snow. I like modern conveniences, and… and _chlorinated_ water, and being only a short walk from a _drug_ store.” As Emma finished, her gaze intersected Sneezy’s, who smiled at her reference to his business.

That made her realize that she wasn’t standing here alone with her parents, but rather airing the family issues in front of half the town. “Forget it. Sorry. Just. I _can’t_. All right?”

Emma pushed her way out of the house, stumbling through the crowd until she could inhale in the clear, leaning hard on the wooden railing running the length of the edge of the porch. Gulping deep breaths, she was unnerved by the roiling in her stomach and afraid she was about to start throwing up again.

The door opened behind her. She glanced back to see Ruby and, behind her, Snow. Emma inhaled and exhaled slowly. Ruby stepped outside, approaching Emma with her hands spread wide, as if Emma was the wolf.

“Hormones, huh?” Ruby guessed.

“No. Well, maybe some of it,” Emma amended. “But, erg, god, I was off the rails, huh?”

“No one I know has yelled at either David or Snow like that, like… _Ever_.”

Emma’s face heated in embarrassment. “Ruby, you know this kind of thing isn’t me. Why didn’t you try to say something before they went… _god…_ to all of this?” Emma threw her hand out, encompassing in the sweep the house, the land. Everything.

Ruby leaned back against the railing with her hips, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think it reminds her of home.”

“This is not a castle,” Emma pointed out.

“Not the castle. Just. The land, the openness.”

“So, she and David, and Neal…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But then there’s you. And she’s your mom.”

“I can’t accept the house, Rubes.”

Ruby tucked her hands together on her thighs. “Okay. How about the other stuff? Baby clothes, diapers, blankets? Toys? I got the cutest damn little gray wolf onesies,” she said.

Emma wiped her eyes and laughed despite her still raw feelings. “I thought I saw lemon shortbread cookies. You guys’ll have to eat the cake. That much sugar will give me diabetic shock.”

“All the lemon shortbread you like,” Ruby assured. “I’ll take the cake.”

Emma hugged Snow when they returned inside, and let the woman put gift after gift on her lap to open.

 

* * *

 

 

“Shopping already?” Regina spoke as she approached the steps leading to Emma’s apartment just in time to open the door for Emma bearing two large bags of what appeared to be baby clothes.

“My parents threw me a baby shower,” Emma said.

To Regina’s dismay a knot formed in her stomach. “Did they? Today?”

“Yeah, a surprise.”

“Was Henry there?” She was surprised her anger felt less about Henry missing school, and more about having missed this event in Emma’s pregnancy.

“No, no. During school, so…”

“So, is all of this from your parents?” Regina looked around at the stacks of new baby items arrayed on various surfaces in Emma’s apartment.

“No, a lot of it is from…” Emma pointed to a set of footed pajamas. “Like that’s from Ruby.” Pointing to another stack, this one of a variety of stacking and multi-colored plastic toys, such as blocks and stacking cups, and keys, Emma added, “Those are from the dwarfs.”

“It looks like you have all you’ll need,” Regina said. She recalled all the boxes of Henry’s baby things she had been sifting through just today, and the box that now sat in her car trunk. “Where will you keep it all?”

“They gave me a house, too. Well, tried to,” Emma added, sitting on her sofa and sorting items as she pulled them from the bags.

“A _house_? Where?”

“I couldn’t take it. It was too far away.”

“Beyond the town line?” Regina bit her lip, surprised by the alarmed note in her question.

“No, the woods. Well, land by the lake. The old farmhouse.”

“Farmhouse? You mean _Zelena’s_ house?”

“Yeah, I told them it wasn’t --”

“My _sister_ Zelena’s house? The _two idiots_ were going to _give_ you _my sister’s house_?!”

“I told them it was wrong.”

“Of _course_ it’s wrong. _If anyone gives you that house, it should be me!_ ” Regina blinked.

Emma’s sorting paused. “Uh, what?”

“It was _Zelena’s_ farmhouse. It should, by rights, be _mine_.”

“It’s just been out there abandoned for months.”

“So your parents just thought --”

Emma grabbed Regina’s hands, making her realize they were fisted in her lap. “My parents weren’t thinking--”

“No, they were _not!_ ”

“Hey, hey. It’s OK. I told them they were wrong. I’ll make ‘em give you the keys.”

Regina furrowed her brow, studying Emma’s fingers squeezing hers. _Mine_ , she thought furiously, the word repeating over and over again in her head.

Lifting her eyes, Regina met Emma’s gaze. Focused on the faint smile and soft green, Regina felt her galloping heart finally slow.

An alarm sounded on a phone, startling her. “What’s that?”

Emma leaned back, leaving Regina’s fingers cold, and lifted her phone from the coffee table. “Time for Henry’s soccer match.”

Emma pulled on a light jacket, and Regina waited for her while she locked the apartment’s front door.

Down at the street, Emma sighed. “I can’t use my car. It’s still loaded with stuff.”

“I’ll drive,” Regina said, pointing to her Benz.

“Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

“God, I love these seats,” Emma rolled her shoulders into the perfectly conforming soft leather.

“I didn’t get it with you in mind,” Regina said, with a smirk as she maneuvered the Benz expertly avoiding the worst of roughly rutted dirt tract where parents parked in order to watch their children play on the perfectly manicured game field. She spared a glance toward Emma, to watch the other woman exhale with a happy sigh, resting her hands over her belly as the shocks took away almost all of the unevenness of the ride. “But you’re welcome.”

Emma beamed at her. “I really like this, that we can do this kind of thing now.”

“This kind of thing?”

“See our kid kick some a-- play on a team with friends. I really did want you to know about his life in New York.”

Regina nodded quickly, rather than letting herself get caught in the crushing undertow that always pulled at her when she remembered that terrible year without her son.

Emma’s hand slid over hers on the gearshift as she put the car in park before pulling the emergency brake. She was drawn up and into bright green. “Maybe we ought to trade a little dreamcatching.”

“What?”

“Share our memories. Yours and mine.”

Regina was so stunned she didn’t move for several moments.   _You’d do that?_ she thought, seeing, not this moment, but another at the Storybrooke town line, just before she sent Emma and Henry away. How odd to feel the surprise herself.

“So, you got lawn chairs in the trunk? I can carry one.” Regina shook herself to see through her windows as Emma circled around to the back of the car.

“I didn’t bring anything. I’m sorry.”

Emma pouted; she looked exactly like Henry when he wanted his latest comic book. Regina smirked and shook her head, bemused. She waved her hand lazily. “Here.” Two folded lawn chairs materialized leaning against the wheel well of the car by Emma’s hand.

The blonde’s grin broadened as she lifted one under each arm. “C’mon.”

“I can carry one,” Regina said.

“I got this.”

Walking behind, Regina admired the broad strides Emma made as she negotiated the uneven ground with the new plusher dimensions of her pregnant body. But still as confident as ever. Regina watched her hand rise toward Emma’s waist as she came even with the other woman. Shifting her hand before she could make contact, Regina took one of the chairs out from under Emma’s grip. “I’ll select our seating,” she chided against Emma’s shoulder.

“Hey, Mom, Ma!!” Out on the field, bouncing on his new cleats, Henry waved to them. Regina waved back just as she and Emma set down their chairs about ten yards away from the east field line. The team bench held their son’s teammates and the coach, Kathryn’s -- or rather Princess Abigail’s -- Frederick. He  waved at her, then pointed toward them and shouted something to a woman in workout gear at the water table. Regina recognized Kathryn, who smiled at them.

Defying her father Midas, Kathryn and Frederick had married during the “lost” year in the Enchanted Forest and were happy together back in their Storybrooke lives, Kathryn working as a legal aid on city business, and Frederick as head coach at the junior high and high school.

“Looks like good times,” Emma said.

“Hmm?”

“Well, Kathryn looks happy.”

“She is. We work well on city business.”

Emma lowered herself into the now assembled lawn chair. “I’m glad.”

“Would you like some water?” Regina asked before sitting.

“You gonna --” Emma wiggled her fingers.

“No,” Regina bit back a laugh. “There’s perfectly serviceable water bottles right over there.”

“Thank you.”

“Be right back.”

 

* * *

 

 

Emma sipped at her water, eyes riveted to Henry running a defense pattern, trying to steal the ball from a leggy boy who had what Emma guessed to be about ten pounds over Henry. She saw the leg move back and winced as she sensed what was coming. “Henry! Jump!”

He didn’t jump, but his attention jerked away from the other boy and that tripped him over his own feet. Instead of being kicked in the shin by the sweeping side motion that the other boy was using to pass the ball, Henry took the ball directly into his stomach, and dropped to the ground winded.

“Henry!” Regina leaped to her feet beside Emma.

“Now, Ms. Mills, he’ll be fine,” Frederick forestalled Regina with a hand on her shoulder, holding her off the field as two of the sports trainers, high school seniors, went out to assess Henry’s condition. Scrappy kid was already working his way back to his feet, though at the moment he was only shakily rising to his hands and knees.

“Emma!”

“What? If I hadn’t distracted him, the other kid would’ve swiped his leg,” Emma defended her call as Regina turned on her. “Probably broke it.”

Regina breathed deeply, drawing Emma’s gaze down -- she hoped the other woman believed the action to be out of remorse for scaring Regina like this. She definitely didn’t want the brunette to see Emma’s flush of arousal from watching that white baseball shirt with the royal purple arms straining to contain the woman’s breasts.

Activity on the field drew both of their awareness away to see Henry waving at them between crouching over his knees and drawing deep breaths. He mouthed “I’m OK” and threw up his right hand with three fingers upward and forefinger and thumb forming an ‘o’.

He’s all right,” Emma reported.

“Yes, he is.” Regina sounded just as winded as Henry looked. “How did you know that would happen?”

“Henry’s year in New York did include a single broken bone,” Emma offered up reluctantly.

“What?!” Regina pulled herself down into her lawn chair.

Emma inhaled and told the story of a similar game, about two months into their life in New York  “which is why he doesn’t have any limp,” she explained. “It completely healed.”

“How could you let him get _hurt_ , Emma?”

“I didn’t _let_ him get hurt. Things happen. Like when you didn’t catch him off the swings when he was four.”

Regina winced.

“Yeah, I remember that, too. God, it was scary,” Emma remarked about the shared recollection. “But it’s okay. He’s okay. I’ve said before he’s our kid, yours and mine. That makes him a survivor.” Emma held Regina’s hand, wrapping around its white-knuckle grip on the arm of the lawn chair. “He has a great life, and great memories of both of us now.”

“He does.”

“Yeah, sometimes he says he thinks back on some moment and it’s like we both raised him. The memories kinda mingle. It’s really special to me that was a side effect, Regina.”

Emma watched Regina as the brunette looked away from Emma’s earnest words to watch their son take the field again. She pulled her fingers away slowly, stroking the finely boned hand with a lingering touch, both ashamed she needed the connection and pleased Regina allowed it.

As the evening began to encroach on the day, Regina became an indistinct silhouette and Emma watched her almost more than the game itself. She heard the buzzer sound the end of the game, a tie at 1-1, and reluctantly stood, folding her chair and turning aside as Henry ran up, greeting Regina first with a full-body hug. She’d had those for a whole year. Still she stole a glance over her shoulder to watch Regina’s head drop on top of Henry’s and her eyes close in such a divine image of pleasure it was almost uncomfortable to watch.

“I can’t believe you distracted me,” Henry said, drawing Emma’s full attention. Regina’s arm still hung around his shoulder.

“You gotta watch those sweep kicks, kid,” Emma grumbled.

“I was trying to steal the ball.”

“You want another broken foot?”

Henry’s grimace was answer enough. He looked up at Regina, offering a smile of reassurance. “It wasn’t really that bad, Mom.” He even kicked out his left foot and wriggled it for her. “See?”

Regina nodded. “Yes, but mind Emma’s warning. She’s likely right. You have to be careful.”

“All right. I’m hungry. Can we find some food?”

“Find some food?” Emma could tell Regina was trying to sound shocked, but she sounded more amused. “This is your influence,” she chided Emma. “Did you simply graze your way through New York?”

“Actually I cooked quite a lot of food. You’ll notice he grew at least three inches last year.” Emma ruffled Henry’s hair as she came alongside him and Regina.

Emma took Regina’s chair, since the other woman kept her arm around Henry. “You drive us back to my place, and I’ll cook you one of my post-game specialties.”

She reached the Benz before Henry and Regina who she could just hear talking excitedly about one of Henry’s early game successful defensive steals. “Regina? Pop the trunk?”

Emma heard the key fob beep in Regina’s hand and the trunk latch disengaged in front of her. When she lifted the trunk, the interior light illuminated the contents. She started to lift the first lawn chair into the cavernous space only to stop in confusion. There was a box taking up a large portion of the trunk. Across the top flap was written “For Emma.”

“What’s this?” Emma untucked one of the cardboard flaps as Henry pulled himself into the back seat, and Regina came around to the trunk. Inside were… “Baby clothes?”

Regina looked alarmed when Emma found her eyes in the faint light from the trunk. “It’s some of Henry’s… I… the attic.”

Emma lifted a baby blue onesie. “These were Henry’s?”

“Yes.” Regina’s fingers twisted around one another, drawing Emma’s gaze to them briefly before she looked back up into brown eyes.

She stood and, before she could think of the propriety of it, she wrapped her arms around Regina, squeezed and released, possibly the fastest hug in human history.

Embarrassment chased Emma into the passenger seat. Regina followed to the driver's seat a few moments later. Emma couldn’t do more than sneak glances toward the brunette the entire drive. Regina begged off partaking of Emma’s post-game special burritos and left quickly after depositing the box from the trunk on the living room floor.

That night Emma played the combination shocked, abashed, and contented expressions that chased themselves around Regina’s features over and over again until she fell asleep still clutching a baby blue onesie that had once been worn by her four-month old son.

 

###

 

 


	6. Lamaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month 6. Emma attends Lamaze classes with Snow and faces a problem. Henry tries to help. Then Regina steps in.

Emma sighed and sat down. God, her feet were killing her. She started to reach for the boots only to stop when she felt a stitch in her side. She glared at the boot, just out of arm’s length, then at the untucked tail of her roomiest button-down shirt which hid the fact that she had finally had to forego even unbuttoned jeans in favor of pants with an elastic waistband. _Elastic, for god’s sake!_ She’d gotten rather used to the more stylish pants and tops she’d worn in New York and Storybrooke since she’d been back.

“Something wrong?”

Expelling another breath, Emma twisted up her lips in Snow’s direction. She forced a smile she didn’t really feel. “Nah, just peachy.”

_Peaches. Mmm._

_No_ , she thought. _Apples would be better. Stewed with butter and cinnamon, in little personal pie shells_. Emma closed her eyes, recalling the dessert last night that Regina had paraded in from the kitchen after Emma swore she couldn’t eat another bite of the melt-in-your-mouth roasted turkey breast with succulent baby carrots Regina had served. She inhaled, swearing she could still smell the mouth-watering aromas. She swallowed.

“Are you in pain?” Snow asked.

Blinking out of her daydream, Emma shook her head. “Huh, wha? No. Nuh uh.”

“Then why are you squirming and moving so much?”

“I was?”

“Emma, you know I was pregnant not too long ago, I can probably --”

“No! No,” Emma moderated her tone. “I don’t… Nothing’s wrong… Well, nothing new anyway. My feet hurt, and I’m a little hungry. We have been waiting here a while.”

Here being the bench on the street corner outside Emma’s apartment.

“David said he’d be right over, so we could all ride to the class together. Save your back and feet. You walk everywhere.”

“It’s good for me. And kidlet.” Emma shrugged. Usually she walked Henry to school, even when Regina was there. And they all walked home from Granny’s after Regina finished at city hall for the day. Emma had finally had to give up patrol shifts and sat in the dispatch room at the Sheriff’s station until Leroy kicked her out.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Emma considered her feet once more. “Help me get these boots off. I can’t sit still any longer.”

Snow quickly knelt at Emma’s feet. Staring down at the top of the woman’s short black hairstyle, Emma felt the tears prickle as she thought how quickly her mother jumped to do anything she asked. The calf boots were worked free. When the socks were stuffed inside, Emma wriggled her toes in the slight breeze with a giggle. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” She pressed the toes into the soft grass and dirt under the bench and reveled in the cool touch of the earth.

She planted her feet and pushed up from the bench, throwing herself a little harder forward to adjust for her new, very inconveniently uncentered, center of balance.

“We better start walking before I gotta pee,” Emma sighed.

“We should wait for David,” Snow said.

“You can wait. I’m walking.” Just feeling the grass underfoot lightened Emma's mood as she walked alongside the sidewalk in the general direction of Storybrooke Hospital.

She tucked her hands under the now well-defined bulge of her abdomen, cradling the distended muscles, and lifted, alleviating the bladder pressure just enough. “C’mon, kidlet,” she spoke to her belly.

David found Snow and Emma three blocks along their walk, about ten minutes later.

“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized. “I left Neal at the convent then Leroy called in a disturbance at the docks.”

“At the docks?” Emma asked. A thought that Hook had returned sent a cold shiver down her back.

“Yeah,” David explained. “Pleasure boaters apparently drifted off course when their anchor didn’t settle right.”

“So they ended up here? Which fairytale characters are they related to?” Emma settled into the wide second seat of David and Snow’s SUV. They’d gotten it when Neal was only a couple days old and Snow insisted they “will not transport my son in a rusted truck bed.”

“Blue’s checking into it, but the barrier may just not be the same on the water.”

“Great, just great,” Emma grumbled.

“So,” David changed the subject. “It’s your first class today. Excited?”

“There will be no drugs and no magic for this kid, so that left me figuring out Lamaze. Whale said I needed a partner.”

Snow beamed.

“Anything at all we can do, Emma. Anything, you know that,” David said as he caught her eye briefly in the rear view. He quirked his lips in a smile; she responded in kind, bemused by the fact that she shared that particular expression with him and Henry.

 

* * *

 

“Now, gentlemen -- excuse me, partners.” Emma rolled her eyes as Snow looked up from her position behind Emma on the floor, the movement digging Snow’s knees into Emma’s low back. She could imagine when she was in pain, it being a really helpful feeling, but right now it was triggering her need to pee rather urgently. “Snow, uh, Mom, please…”

Snow looked down at Emma and pulled her knees back with a scooting motion that meant her hands tugged at Emma’s shoulders. Emma braced herself on her own elbows and pulled free of her mother’s grip, as they both tried to get comfortable again.

It didn’t help that Emma felt particularly ungainly right now. Her mother always seemed so tiny, and Emma felt huge sprawled, and somehow more obviously pregnant than any of the other women laying on the floor around them. The room’s floor was covered in sports pads, like a gymnastics class might have, but they were a hideously nauseating Pepto pink.

“Better?” Snow asked against her ear. The instructor, actually looking like some sports instructor in a blue and silver workout suit, continued to give directions for the lamaze coaches to help their pregnant partners find that comfortable position on the floor.

“Better,” Emma winced as Snow dug her fingers into Emma’s midback when the instructor told them to “find the knots and work them out.” “Ow, hey. I don’t currently have any knots there,” she tried under her breath.

“Oh, sorry. Does it hurt anywhere in particular?” Snow asked. Emma looked away from Snow’s eyes, finding David’s where he sat along the wall, half in conversation with a ten year old girl who was here with her mom and dad “waiting for my baby sister“ which she’d been talkative enough to explain the entire twenty-two minutes the six of them waited when they arrived early for the class. He smiled widely at Emma as he answered, looking overjoyed at the contact with the little girl. She knew he felt he missed out raising her, but Emma felt less oppressed by the way he expressed it, than when Snow lamented missing this or that moment with Emma when relating something that had happened with Neal.

“Okay, now that we’re all situated.” At the instructor’s voice, Emma pushed herself into a more comfortable position on her hands, knees bent up and around her belly.

“We’re going to identify all the muscles involved first, so we can feel if something is wrong.”

Emma concentrated, tightening and loosening areas of her lower body as instructed, while Snow laid her hands on those same places to feel the muscles’ responses. The green eyes darting to hers looking for confirmation, reassurance, or just plaintively begging began to annoy her, so she closed her eyes, going only on feel.

Tighten, relax. Okay. Next one. Emma felt a sharp twinge and yelped.

“Sorry.”

“Wait until I let go,” Emma said.

“I thought you had.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Everything all right here, ladies?” Emma’s eyes snapped open to find the instructor crouched about two feet away, staring from her mother to her.

“Yes.” “Yeah.” Snow’s bright positivity and Emma’s dull acknowledgement were in almost perfectly synchronized harmony. How ironic.

“You need to talk to each other,” he said. His face, kinda mousy and round, scrunched up in a smile. Emma gamely smiled back but then another twinge pulled at her upper thigh and she grimaced.

Snow was silent; Emma certainly wasn’t going to say anything.

Finally she couldn’t hold back and gasped, lurching and grabbing the charley horse forming in her thigh. “Ah!”

Snow looked down at the muscle clearly rippling and started to massage it. The pain worsened and Emma rolled away, curling in but unable, due to her dimensions, to grab the leg and work out the issue for herself. “Shit.” She rolled until her belly didn’t allow her to roll further and pushed to her hands, dragging her uncooperative leg, still spasming, behind her. She pulled herself into a chair along the wall and gulped air to slow her breathing and try to block the pain.

Having followed, Snow sat beside her, patting her hand, looking helpless. The instructor had also come over. Emma shook her head and nodded him away. “I’ll be fine. Just a minute, just a cramp. Gimme a sec.” She wiped ineffectually at the tears on her cheeks. Instead of leaving, the man pulled her thigh between his big hands and laid them broadly and flatly against the twisting muscle. As a result of tiny circular motions, Emma finally felt the dagger-like pain recede.

“Nerve got pinched,” he said. “When that happens,” he directed his words to Snow, “you have to help her roll off the compressed point, free the nerve, get circulation back.”

Snow looked scared. Emma sighed and closed her eyes against Snow’s shoulder. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine. I’ll figure out something,” she murmured.

“But, Emma --”

Emma put her hand over her mother’s fidgeting ones. “Let’s just… breathe...okay? Just… a little... calm... breathing. Yeah?”

Snow nodded; Emma closed her eyes and started to count her heartbeats, centering herself. Despite her outward calm, Emma knew this was just not going to work, if she was spending more time worrying about her mother than focusing on getting through the delivery.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey, Grams, Grampa!” Henry lifted his hand in a wave as he got out of the car. Regina turned in her own process of getting out to see David holding the door for Snow.

“Hello, Henry.” Regina frowned, hearing the too bright tone in Snow’s voice, which usually meant the woman was upset about something. She glanced up to a window she knew belonged to Emma’s apartment, then looked back down at the two.

“Hello, Snow. David.” She inclined her head toward each of them as they walked to the SUV parked just beyond the corner.

“Regina,” David replied, but Snow just looked at her, her expression clearly worried, before smiling at Henry who gave her a hug.

“Something the matter?” she asked David.

“Neal’s waiting for dinner at home.” Though ten months old Regina knew the boy still took a bottle, so that was an excuse.

“Emma said she’s tired or we would have taken her with us,” Snow said. Regina was being advised not to stick around.

She looked away from Snow to notice that Henry had vanished, likely already upstairs to check on Emma. “Excuse me while I see to my son,” she said. She added, “Both of you have a quiet evening.”

“Neal’s teething,” David said.

Regina dipped her head, hiding a smirk, then, returning her face to an appropriately grave expression, she offered, “I’m sorry to hear that. Try an ice ring?”

Not waiting to see how her advice was received, Regina hurried into the stairwell, putting Emma’s charming parents out of her mind.

“Emma?” she called as she entered the unlocked front door.

She spotted Henry first, leaning over. As he lifted his head and partially turned, she realized he was standing over Emma. Sitting. On the floor. Regina’s breath caught in her throat. But speaking quickly to cover her surprise, she asked, “Is everything all right?”

Emma sighed, shoulders slumping. She wore a tank top, stretched across her breasts and belly, which was prominent between her raised knees. The blonde rolled partially to her side and wrestled, using the coffee table, to rise from the floor. Regina dug her nails into her palms and resisted the urge to step forward and help. Emma’s response relaxed her marginally.

“Yeah. Yeah, I… was just telling Henry… I was practicing breathing.”

Regina let a smirk touch her lips, feeling that whatever had sent Emma to the floor wasn’t dire, and put down her purse as a punctuation to her words with a twist of her lips. “Well, I would hope you didn’t _need_ practice, dear. It’s rather a basic skill.”

Exactly as she hoped, though her eyes were shiny, Emma rolled them at Regina. “Lamaze breathing,” the blonde explained. “For the birth.” She sounded tired, though there was a note of mirth rising quickly over the exhaustion. “I thought maybe he could help me.”

“You intend for Henry to accompany you into the birthing room?” Regina’s surprise matched the sudden awareness dawning on their son’s face.

“Uh, no, no way, Ma.” He threw up his hands and backed away.

“But, Henry,” Emma pleaded.

“You call me kid for a reason. You need an adult for that.”

Emma sighed and set herself down on top of the coffee table. “Yeah, I know,” she admitted, rubbing her hands over her face.

“What about Grams or Gramps?” Henry asked, just as Regina opened her mouth to suggest the same.

“Yeah, uh, well…” Emma trailed off, pushing to her feet. “You staying for dinner, Regina?” she asked, changing the subject as she moved past Henry into the kitchen.

“Snow said you were tired. Perhaps you shouldn’t --” Regina reasoned.

Emma spoke under her breath, braced on the counter between both hands. “I said that to get her to go home."

“So, you’re not tired?” Henry asked. Even Regina could see Emma close her eyes briefly.

“Maybe a little, but…” The blonde trailed off and shook her head. “How about some vegetable stir-fry?” She grabbed a wok from a hook on a wall in the pantry.

“Sounds good,” Henry said. He looked at Regina. She quickly interpreted the dip and toss of his head, and raise of his eyebrow as a silent ‘Do something.’

So she did, grabbing an apron off the hook inside the pantry door before Emma could close it. “Stir-fry sounds lovely. I’ll work on the rice,” she added, dropping to a crouch to retrieve the rice from a lower cabinet.

Henry disappeared, and Regina stepped beside Emma, filling a measuring cup from an upper cabinet with water as she tried to continue figuring out how to navigate the emotional minefield where Emma currently had cornered herself.

“So… breathing?” Regina asked quietly as she watched Emma clearly working out some frustrations by slicing a series of colorful peppers, snow peas, and snap peas.

Emma nodded. “Yeah, it’s called Lamaze. It’s supposed to help with the pain of labor. Make it easier, help delivery when you’re not using drugs.”

“I see.” Regina leaned back against the side counter, looked down then up as she crossed her arms. “You need a partner for this?”

“Whale says so.” Emma’s sigh pulled at Regina’s chest. “Henry found me on the floor practicing.”

“I was wondering.”

“It wasn’t working.”

“I gathered.” Regina took a deeper breath before continuing. “What does your partner actually do?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Show me after dinner.”

Emma stopped pushing the vegetables around in the skillet and lifted her gaze to meet Regina’s. There was a long pause as they took each other’s measure. Emma said nothing, but there was a small pleased smile as she lowered her gaze back to the skillet.

 

* * *

 

 

From behind the edge of the wall, Emma watched Regina. Regina apparently hadn’t yet sensed Emma’s return from the bathroom. The brunette was bent and examining a magazine on the coffee table. Emma recognized the issue of _New Motherhood_ Snow had left behind. She hadn’t looked through it herself yet. “Snow said the columns were good advice.”

Regina looked up; the smile was quick and easy, which only surprised Emma a little bit, before Regina stood. “So…”

“Yeah…” Emma gestured to the table. “We need to move this.”

She and Regina both bent to the task, Regina looking up briefly at Emma to see which direction.

Once it was aside, Emma shrugged. “It’s easier on the floor.”

Regina nodded. “Do you need a hand?”

Emma used the table and lowered herself to her knees. “Getting up is a bitch,” she grumbled a little, though she watched Regina’s eyes light up in amusement.

In the same time, Regina lowered herself easily to kneel on her own next to Emma, hands resting on her knees. Emma watched the fingers moving over the light hosiery and nodded. “The breathing,” she said, noticing how her own had sped up a little as she raised her eyes to see Regina’s lips parted slightly as she breathed.

“When the contractions are coming, it’ll be a little hard here,” Emma put her own hand across her abdomen. “Well, a lot hard actually, like someone’s squeezing my guts with iron.”

Emma watched Regina’s face as the brown gaze dropped to study Emma’s midsection. The stomach flutters were back. “Yeah. I… Well,” Emma reached out tentatively for Regina’s hand. “Here,” she tightened the muscles intentionally, hoping that it would be enough.

Regina’s hand turned palm out and long warm fingers pressed lightly against Emma’s abdomen. She closed her eyes, breathing quietly. Emma found it relaxing and closed her own eyes.

“It will...kinda… ripple, he said.”

Emma was surprised to hear Regina clear her throat. “Your instructor?”

She nodded before she realized Regina probably still had her eyes closed. “Yeah.”

“So…” Regina’s voice trailed away. Emma simply found herself matching Regina’s calm breathing. “How,” Regina finally went on quietly, “will knowing this help me help you?”

“You… the coach’s job is to help me find a way to relax... help the contractions... not... fight them.”

“You are quite a fighter,” Regina remarked. Emma’s eyes opened to see Regina’s smirk as her eyes swirled dark brown in the low lighting of the room.

Emma felt the heat in her cheeks and nodded. “Yeah, I am,” she said, smiling back.

###

 


	7. Familiarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Month 7. Emma and Regina have developed quick and easy familiarity, which includes Regina chastising Emma for missing dinner, talking about baby names, and working out sore spots, both in Emma's body, and their history, with care and attention.

Emma stood, pressing her hands, fingers laced together, outward toward the ceiling. Bringing them down after feeling several vertebrae shift, she rolled her knuckles into the tight pain-filled muscles at the small of her back. Her groan of relief was interrupted by a surprised gasp when she felt other hands push aside her own, delivering an intense massage to the tight muscles.

“Better?” Regina watched Emma’s face closely while she let her thumbs and knuckles push through to the deeper muscle layers to relieve the blonde’s tension.

She smiled when Emma’s gasp became a happy sigh. Over the last few weeks she was beginning to feel quite accomplished in the way she had begun to accurately interpret the various sounds. Who knew her attention to detail could be quite so useful?

“Why are you still here?” she asked, looking around the empty sheriff’s station. Outside the sun was quickly heading for the horizon.

“There were just a few more reports.”

Emma’s lower lip rolled between her teeth; Regina knew then that she could let up on her massage. The blonde leaned forward, away from her touch, resting her forehead on her forearms against the wall.

“I fed Henry.” Regina pointed to a small container she had put down by the doorway when she had seen Emma’s distress. “Brought you a wrap.”

Emma looked at the food. Her throat moved spasmodically and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She shook her head.

“You waited too long to eat,” Regina realized. “All right. I’ll get some water.” She left the office before Emma could protest. When she returned with a paper cup from the office filtered water dispenser, Regina saw Emma had lowered herself into an armless deputy’s chair. She was reflexively swallowing down an urge to throw up while rubbing her temples.

“Here.” Regina crouched at Emma’s knee, looking up and watching closely as the blonde sipped at the water.

“Not gonna be sick,” Emma protested.

“Certainly looked like it to me,” Regina said. “You know you have to eat something every couple of hours.”

“I know. I know.” Emma closed her eyes and took a longer sip from the paper cup, finally crumpling it in her fist. She rested her hands with the cup, atop her very pregnant belly.

Regina looked at the pale green top then blinked and refocused. The wrinkles rippled. As though magnetically drawn to it, Regina’s hand settled on the right side abdominals where she had seen the ripple.

She felt it happen again.

The muscle under her fingertips was suddenly steel-hard. Emma’s face scrunched and her hand joined Regina’s.

“Has this happened before?” Regina asked.

“A couple times earlier today,” Emma admitted. She winced following her words and Regina saw the motion happen again.

Though this time both of them felt the muscle jolt at the end of the squeezing.

“Oh, god, kidlet, please no rib-kicking,” Emma pleaded. Her head rolled back on her neck and both hands began rubbing at the spot while Regina couldn’t decide which was more important to watch, Emma’s face, or her stomach.

“Perhaps,” Regina suggested, to take Emma’s mind off the discomfort. “Your child is overtired and hungry like her mother.”

“Her?” Both Emma and Regina jumped as the singular word was met with a decidedly strong kick. Though, Regina was uncertain; it might have been a hand and not a foot.

“Perhaps she is objecting to your nickname choice?” Regina suggested.

“I don’t know if it’s a he or a she,” Emma protested. “That’s why I use it.”

Both their fingers rubbed at the same spot. Regina rolled her fingers outward, searching for the edge of the muscle fibers, as she had learned, to ease Emma’s pain.

“My mom dropped off a baby names book today,” Emma said quietly after a minute of their intensive work to lower her pain.

“And you have been stressing over the names she circled -- or did she list them inside the front cover?” Regina continued to focus on slowly circling on the muscles with her fingers while Emma inhaled and exhaled with carefully regulated breaths.

Emma nodded to confirm Regina’s guess and rolled the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“Headache?” Regina asked. When Emma nodded again, starting to push to her feet, Regina added, “I’ll get you home.”

“It’s a class night,” Emma reminded tiredly.

“We will practice at home,” Regina said firmly.

“I think I’m supposed to attend all the classes, or I won’t graduate.”

“Now you’re worried about graduating something?” Regina said with exasperation. “We will have Chester reschedule with us in the morning. You are in need of rest and food.”

Emma lowered her hands from her temples. “Man, are you testy when I’m hungry.”

Blinking in surprise, Regina thought back over her words. “I… am used to making decisions quickly.”

“Relax, Regina. You sold me. Chester will be happy to reschedule. You’re probably the best student he’s ever had.”

“He has only had a dozen since the curse was broken,” Regina said. But she could not deny the praise made her feel good.

Emma laughed. “True.” She met Regina at the doorway and took the food container. “I’ll eat while you drive.”

“Where?”

“Home. I need sleep.”

“And food.” Regina held the door, watching the blonde’s feet -- Emma could no longer see them herself -- as they navigated the hallway and then shifted her weight to lower herself off the curb and into the passenger seat of the Benz.

Regina answered her cell phone as she was moving around to the driver side. She smiled, seeing Henry’s name. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“You got Ma?”

“Yes, I just put her in the car. We’re on our way home.”

“Don’t you have that labor class?”

“We’ll reschedule. Emma forgot to eat,” she said, adding a reproving look toward Emma as she started the car’s engine. “She needs to sleep as well.”

“OK. Anything you need me to do?”

Pulling away from the curb, Regina said, “Finish your homework. We’ll be there shortly.”

“‘Kay. I love you.”

“I love you too, Henry.” She set the phone down in the center console in order to concentrate on driving.

“Henry?” Emma asked.

“Of course.” At the stop sign, Regina looked over to see Emma looking down at her belly, rubbing the very round surface with a distracted smile. A flutter of pleasure erupted in Regina’s stomach at the sight. _Dare she call it pride?_

 

* * *

 

Emma rolled over slowly, moving her thighs away from each other, groaning as she felt the wetness between them. She exhaled and inhaled slow and deep to slow her heart rate. She frowned as she smelled the sex in the air and pushed the large pillow out from between her breasts. She bit her lip, looking around the darkness, for a moment not sure where she was.

Seeing the familiar plain trappings of her apartment bedroom, she marginally relaxed. A glance toward the door found the lights in the hallway beyond were out. She pressed her lips together and tried to listen for sounds in the rest of the apartment. When she heard nothing, she felt a shiver go through her body in complete relief and pushed herself out of the bed, crawling backward off the mattress until her belly stopped being supported. The ache from the evening before was a mere twinge. _Regina’s magic hands_ , Emma thought with no little irony. The woman had not used one single finger twitch of actual magic. She was simply a gifted masseuse.

It always started a little awkward for Emma, stripped to a t-shirt and boy shorts. She was usually curled to one side these days, her belly being an impediment, and she wondered how Regina was ever going to find that knot, the one that would ping and ping like some submarine sonar in Emma’s low back. But then Emma would become so relaxed as Regina worked and talked Emma through breathing practice, sleep invariably became inevitable.

She noticed Henry’s bedroom door still closed and turned toward the kitchen. Rounding the corner she reached for the light, but drew up before touching the switch.

Just beyond the kitchen counter Emma could see into the living room to the sofa in front of the television. Regina slept with her head on one end pillow and her bare feet tucked up at the other end. The woman’s eyes were closed, chest expanding and contracting peacefully, barely restrained by the same plain white blouse she’d worn the night before under a vest, which had been discarded to the sofa arm. Dark hair hid much of Regina’s hands tucked under her head.

Thinking of Regina’s hands brought the throbbing back to Emma’s center. She backed slowly out of the kitchen, hesitating in the doorway, not sure whether to return to her room or approach Regina in the living room.

A quick glance back into the kitchen found the dishes washed, food put away, and counters spotless. She shook her head. Regina took care of everything.

 _So easily; so effortlessly_. Emma sighed, aware that her dreams were only the latest symptom. _I am falling in love with Regina Mills_.

“Emma?” Turning around, she saw Regina had pushed herself up and now sat in the middle of the sofa, running her fingers through tousled hair as she sorted herself mentally.

“Hey.”

“Did you need something?”

Emma quickly shook her head. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s a school day. I thought I’d drive Henry then we could go for the makeup class. I called Chester last night, after you went to bed.”

“Oh.” Emma nodded.

Regina stood. Emma took a step back. “Is something the matter, dear?”

“Just slow waking up,” Emma fibbed.

“You definitely needed the rest,” Regina agreed. “Why don’t you bathe while I get Henry ready? We’ll all have breakfast before we go.”

Regina flipped on the light to the kitchen. Her body was a breath away from Emma, who found she could only stare at Regina, her blood rushing in her ears.

“Thanks,” Emma murmured.

Regina’s smile set off a flurry of butterflies in Emma’s chest. Feeling her cheeks heat, she backed up quickly, running to the bathroom to hide.

 

* * *

 

 

“Now, hopefully, you’ve been practicing your breathing,” Chester said.

The Lamaze instructor was looking down at Regina and Emma from over the back of a chair he had straddled. There was no need for him to walk around today. After all, they were his only students in the room.

“This woman’s a taskmaster, I tell you.”

Regina turned her head to see Emma smiling crookedly at her. She looked away from the light green eyes down to the bare shoulder almost tucked into her own chest. She sat -- they both did -- on the floor pads, her left knee against Emma’s back. After coming to her first class in heels and pantsuit and discovering the impracticality of it as they spent their time on the floor, Regina always made sure to wear more flexible attire. Like Emma, she now wore a tank top and sweat pants.

“I simply determined that the more you practice, the more prepared you’ll be.”

“You’ll _both_ be,” Chester emphasized. “It has to be second nature. For both of you. Emma’s going to be so caught up in what her body is screaming, she’ll forget --”

“Like she forgot to eat yesterday?” Regina let her reproving comment become softened by a higher lift at the end of the question.

As she had wanted to happen, instead of being offended or angry, Emma just dropped her head against Regina’s collarbone and groaned. “You don’t have to blab to everybody.”

“Chester is not _everybody_ , dear. He’s the instructor. You should always be honest with the teacher when you haven’t done your homework.”

“But we did, last night, after I ate.”

“And almost threw up from the strain,” Regina reminded her.

“That is the reason you’re not supposed to eat much the day you deliver,” Chester pointed out. “So, you guys ready?” he asked.

Regina heard Emma’s murmur of assent and saw her roll her shoulder. Reaching for the muscle, Regina laid her palm against it and rubbed in small circles. The murmur shifted to a hum of happiness.

Regina looked up from Emma to see Chester watching them. “What are we doing today?”

“Holding her back from pushing,” he said.

“I thought pushing was the point?” Emma blurted.

“Sometimes it isn’t the right moment to push. You don’t want to be doing it when the doctor’s listening for distress or if something’s wrong and he needs to adjust the baby’s position. The urge will be there, but it’s not a good time.”

“So how the hell do I stop it?” Emma asked. Regina heard a flutter of panic and felt it as well in the shaking of Emma’s shoulder against her chest.

“You,” he answered and pointed at Regina, “have to make her think of something else. So you talk.”

“What should I say?”

Chester smiled and reached out, placing his hand on Emma’s leg. “Tighten this muscle for me,” he told her.

Regina watched as he nodded to Emma to begin. “Hold it,” he said finally though he didn’t remove his hand. “Now you. Regina, the doctor’s said she’s not dilated fully. She has to stop pushing, loosen the muscles.”

“So I tell her.”

Chester shook his head. “Emma’s covered in sweat. She’s had a backache all day. She hasn’t eaten since last night. She’s tired. And she’s crying.”

Regina tried to think. She’d so seldom seen Emma cry. _What...?_   She started to think about Neverland. Chester’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Keep it tight, Emma. Focus. Regina’s got this.” After a moment he added, “Better.”

“I have my job and you have yours,” she said almost without thinking about it. “Just like we are with Henry.”

Emma stared at her. “We share everything about Henry,” she said earnestly.

“You are still the more lenient parent while I am strict.”

“If this is about me letting him have --”

“It’s not. I am not admonishing --”

“Sure sounds like it,” Emma groused, dropping her head.

“Brilliant.” Chester interrupted Regina’s brushing of Emma’s fallen hair from her face as she prepared to say something.

“What?” Regina looked at Emma after they both had blurted the same thing, with the same indignation.

“You distracted her.”

“She _argued_ with me,” Emma pointed out.

“Regina never raised her voice. And you never tensed further.” Regina watched Chester pat Emma’s leg. She had an irrational thought of making him remove his hand. _Mine._ She blinked. _My job_ , she had meant to think ‘my job’. _Right?_

“So she’s supposed to start a fight with me to distract me from labor? How is that calming?”

“No, she’s going to talk to you. Give you other things to think about, to focus on, when you need to make your body rest.”

Chester looked at Regina.

“You know her pretty well. What topics do you talk about?”

“Henry. Our son.”

“So you guys already have another child. This should be easy.”

“I was not present when Emma gave birth to Henry.”

Chester looked at Emma. “She wasn’t? Why not?”

“I was in jail. I --”

Regina rubbed Emma’s shoulder, heading off the memories she could see entering Emma’s face. “We didn’t know of each other then. I adopted Henry.”

Emma yelped. Regina glared at Chester when she identified that he had squeezed Emma’s leg sharply. “Let her go.” He shook his head, but he was smiling.

“Keep going.” Chester spoke to Regina. “Look at her. Why didn’t you know her then?”

“Likely she would have been Emma Mills instead of Emma Swan,” Regina said without thinking.

“Regina?”

“Had my soldiers found you, you would have remained in Storybrooke.”

“What about the savior thing? Wouldn’t they have…” Emma winced. “…wouldn’t you have just…” She grasped Regina’s thigh, digging in with her fingernails. “...killed me?”

Regina wrapped her hand around Emma’s and loosened the grip, soothing the muscles. “Perhaps. I was determined to have my victory. But…” She looked at Emma’s face, seeing a little sweat had broken out on her forehead. She brushed it away. “Perhaps I would have taken you with me. You would have been my daughter, instead of Snow’s.”

“What the fuck?” Emma yelped. “Damn it, that hurt!”

Regina blinked. “What?”

“He jammed something into my hip.”

“I’ve been poking you pretty steadily.” He lifted a capped ballpoint pen. “You ladies got this thing in the bag. You don’t need to get so deep though. Keep it light. Talk about who will go to the kid’s ball practices, or who left the last dirty dishes in the sink. Have you decided on names yet?”

“My mother left me a name book. She circled ‘Adeline’ if you can believe that,” Emma said, looking up at Regina.

“I’m surprised she didn’t suggest Eva.”

“You know you’re having a girl?”

“No, I don’t know the sex yet. So… You angling to have the kid named after you, Chester?” Emma raised an eyebrow at their instructor.

“How’d you choose Henry?” he asked.

“It’s my father’s name,” Regina said.

“How about naming this one after your father,” he directed to Emma.

“Would that be James, David...or Charming?” Emma laughed.

Regina smirked. “Or one of the dwarves?”

“Thank god for Storybrooke names,” Emma said. Regina grinned, feeling like Emma was offering her a compliment. The smile the blonde showed her seemed to suggest as much.

“Well, you guys keep practicing. Emma, you work your way through the muscle tensioning exercises we covered that first class. Regina, keep your hands on each muscle and talk her out of each.”

Regina felt a squeeze on her hand and looked down to see Emma's hand wrapped around her fingers.

“I think we can do that,” Emma said. “C’mon. I’m hungry.”

Standing quickly, Regina pulled Emma carefully to her feet, making sure she didn’t pull unevenly as Emma settled her own balance with the guidance.

“See you Thursday night, ladies.”

Regina guided Emma through the door with a hand on her low back. “Thursday night,” she confirmed, looking back to see the instructor smiling. She smiled in return, only noticing when she passed a mirror on the wall. She tried to pull a more neutral expression only to feel it failing. _God, am I actually happy?_

“I’m gonna need something major,” Emma groused. Regina looked at Emma only to see the back of her head. Her gaze drifted down the soft curls until she noticed a tangle. With a light touch, a couple of twists, she worked out the knot and stroked her fingers through the soft ends.

“We can take a basket to the lake. We ought to walk a bit after all that sitting.”

Emma stopped at the door leading from the hospital. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I’ll even allow it to be takeout from Granny’s.” Regina pushed open the door and held it for Emma to pass through.

She felt a need to get to the lake quickly. She could already imagine watching the sun touching Emma’s hair and making it even more golden.

Her gaze drifted to her fingers then. She had reached for Emma’s shoulder, but her fingers were sifting again through the ends of Emma’s hair. The words burst out of her. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to be my daughter.”

“What would you have wanted me to be?”

Regina’s brow furrowed. “You.” _Emma Swan._ She thought of all the different things that name had come to mean. Her own memory potion broken by the discovery that the woman standing before her so awkwardly was Henry’s birthmother. _The Savior. Emma…_ who saved Regina from a mob, from a wraith, from a portal back to the Enchanted Forest. _Emma…_ her cohort in saving Henry. The woman who was frustratingly afraid of her own beautiful magic. The woman who wanted Regina to have a relationship with Henry even when he had no idea who she was. The woman who now shared the memories of raising their son. _Emma, the woman I…_ Regina’s blood rushed in her ears.

She found Emma staring at her oddly. “You okay?” the blonde asked.

“I? Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

“Good, because there is no way I’m getting behind the wheel of your car in this condition.”

“As if I would let you.”

Emma chuckled.

###


	8. Somewhere Else I'd Rather Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late in Month 8. Regina's at the mayor's office with a full slate of meetings and events, but she's got Emma on her mind more than the work.

“Madame Mayor!” Regina looked up from stepping inside city hall to see a harried-looking young man striding swiftly toward her. He had his tie askew, a clipboard in his hand and a pen he was just placing back between his teeth after calling out for her, while she heard his beeper on his hip going off.

“What is it, Jason?” He blinked. She tapped her lips to indicate he might want to remove the pen once more, and waited.

He indeed rearranged himself once more to remove the pen, pinning it under the middle finger of his hand gripping the clipboard. “Madame Mayor,” he started again.

“You’ve said that,” she said. “You have my attention.”

“We have to get to the Cannery,” he said. “You’re late for the ribbon-cutting.”

“That was scheduled for Tuesday.” She was sure; she had specifically relaxed about giving Emma a foot rub that morning because it was Monday morning, when she had always scheduled no morning appointments.

“Today’s Tuesday. And you’re late. I already had to reschedule your first two morning appointments.”

Regina blinked. “Damn.” She turned around. Jason followed her to the car. “Get in.”

As she hurriedly drove them to the cannery, he told her the rest of the schedule.

“The Cannery event goes until ten, when you have to leave -- and please, don’t let Eric talk you into staying just five more minutes to see his kids’ pictures! -- because George will not postpone the investment meeting for the city employees’ retirement fund. That’s at eleven, back at city hall.”

“Why did I schedule the cannery opening on the same day as a meeting with George?” she asked.

“We rescheduled George from last week. He was… annoyed. Threatened to back Gold for mayor next time.”

“Seriously?” Regina sighed. “All right, after George, what else do I have? I need to pick up Henry from school at three.”

“Today? You’ve got about fifteen minutes. Why not have Emma pick him up?”

“She has her last exam,” Regina said. It’s why Emma had been so tense this morning. The blonde was feeling the weeks heavily at the moment. This was week 37. She had “graduated” from the lamaze classes last week, and two couples from their class had already delivered. Early. Emma was scared it would happen to her. Regina had sat on the edge of Emma’s bed for twenty-five minutes that morning, listening and rubbing, and talking a little, assuring Emma that she was doing everything right. Nothing was going to go wrong.

As they were getting out at the cannery, Regina’s phone buzzed. She grabbed for it quickly, putting it to her ear before she even looked at the screen. “Emma?”

“Emma?” Jason asked.

“Sh,” Regina stopped walking. “Hello?”

“This isn’t Miss Swan,” said Gold on the other end. “What are you doing?”

“I’m headed into a ribbon-cutting,” Regina said quickly. “What do you want?”

“I want to see when I might be able to have five minutes of your time.”

“About what?” She shook it off. “Here’s Jason. Talk to him.”

She unceremoniously shoved her phone at Jason who juggled, and dropped, the clipboard and his own phone in order to catch hers. He mouthed “ten” and Regina moved quickly into the crowd of people standing at a side entrance to the Storybrooke Cannery. She met two fishermen, still in waders, and Donald and Eric, in business suits. “Donald, Eric,” she greeted.

“Right this way, Madame Mayor,” Eric said.

“Of course.” The two fishermen fell into step behind them with a six foot long pair of shears. Seriously, she thought, rolling her eyes. Photo op, she reminded herself. Everything’s big.

She stepped up to the podium only to recall she had not grabbed the notes from her desk. Even as she thought the words, Jason hurried up alongside her. In the space between their bodies he passed her a small sheaf of notecards. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, just as low.

With an exhale, Regina smiled at the audience and began speaking.

 

* * *

 

 

“George,” Regina greeted from the doorway making the attorney turn around in his chair to look at her.

“Regina,” he said. She nodded, accepting his testy tone. “Finally ready to discuss the fund?”

“All the fish will keep swimming into the harbor,” she said, alluding to her Cannery opening. “Storybrooke is good for business.”

“I heard about the pleasure boaters. Are we sure we’re still secure from the outside?”

“As far as I know,” Regina replied. “Now, I only have a few minutes. What do you have for me?” She slid into the most heavily padded chair at the head of the conference table. Though small, it meant he would have to come to her.

He stood and moved over a seat, only after a heavy sigh, which told her he had hoped to keep a slight advantage by making her sit on the side with him. She bit her lip to keep back the smirk, and instead looked at the papers he handed her.

“We have 47 employees on the retirement rolls. And another twenty due to reach retirement in the next six years. Our fund won’t be able to handle another ten years without some restructuring of either enrollment or investments.”

“Probably both,” Regina summed up reasonably.

“Probably.”

“What’s your recommendation?”

George started to shuffle the stack in her hand when a phone in the outer office space rang. Regina looked up as Jason crossed past the open doorway to his desk. Then she heard him talking. She tried to catch what was being said.

“Regina?”

“What?”

“What do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“If we raise the retirement age, only half-invest the newest employees, we could get another twenty-five years.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Regina said.

“Fair?”

“Yes, fair. These people have put in a lot of work for the city, made it our home. It works. We should reward them.”

George’s face turned a little red. “Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He stared at her then muttered, “Charming.”

“They would have said the same.”

“Exactly. You wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of rewarding people.”

“Snow’s not mayor, I am.”

“Well, I’m thinking I might back someone else next election.”

“Jason told me. You think Gold will allow you any privilege in this office at all?” she pointed out. “I’ve run this town for 30 years.”

“Most of that time no one knew what the hell was going on.”

“So, you think it’s time for new --” Regina cut herself off. Jason had appeared in her doorway. “Yes, Jason?” She rose quickly to her feet, thinking immediately that the concern she saw in his face meant the phone call had been from Emma.

“I’m still talking here.”

“I apologize, sir , the mayor is needed at her next meeting.”

“Have a restructuring proposal for the retirement fund delivered to my office by the end of the week,” Regina said. “Who’s the meeting with?” she asked, following Jason out to his desk.

When he didn’t say anything right away, she thought she was right, that he had not pulled her from George’s meeting for another meeting, but… “Is it an emergency with Emma? Was that her on the phone?”

“No, ma’am. It wasn’t Sheriff Swan. It was Mr. Gold again. He says he will visit you at home tonight.”

“Did he say why?”

“He says the business is private.”

“Tell him I will meet with him here, right at the end of the business day. He is not to come to my home. I won’t be there in any case. But I won’t have him come there.”

“Understood. You do have the school board budget meeting in about ten minutes. I can tell him that you are late.”

Regina exhaled and gripped Jason’s arm in relief. “Thank you.” He handed her back her cell phone. “I’ll have it on.”

“On your way back from the meeting, you can probably collect Henry from school. I’ll tell the school office to have him wait for you instead of boarding the bus.”

Regina smiled. “Thank you.” She hurried out without a backward glance though she heard George call her name from inside the conference room.

 

* * *

 

 

Regina turned her face into the afternoon sun as she stepped out of city hall to walk the three blocks to the school board building. A little nervous energy walk off seemed important. She brushed her fingers against her throat’s thrumming pulse. She put her other hand into her suit jacket’s pocket and checked for her phone’s presence. I’ll just call, she thought, finishing the thought at the same time she hit redial and put the phone to her ear.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” Regina evaluated Emma’s reply for her general mood. She sounded tired, a little, but generally positive. “How did the appointment go?”

“Whale says everything’s fine, doesn’t know why I’m worried.”

“Then you shouldn’t worry,” Regina said. “So, you took a nap when you got home?”

“Yeah. I fell asleep thumbing through the book.”

“Any new ideas?” Regina asked.

“What do you think of Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Joey, or Phoebe?”

“This child will not be part of the cast of Friends,” Regina reproved. As she hoped, Emma laughed.

“Hey they’re better than Jerry, or Elaine,” Emma said. “Kramer or George.”

“George. Speaking of that. I just finished a meeting with George. He is going to propose a restructuring of the city’s retirement fund.”

“Nothing like moving a whole town back into the time-space continuum to make people grow old.”

Regina smiled. “I have to get off the phone,” she said letting her regret easily show in her voice. “I only called because I was between meetings.”

“You sound like you’re outside.”

“Walked over to the school board building.”

“Ah, don’t you just love budget season.”

“It certainly isn’t my favorite thing.”

“You don’t say. The Madame Mayor I remember loved budget time.”

“That was before we had to repair roads and storefronts. And the whole clocktower because of giants and magic fights.”

Emma’s chuckle reached through the phone and wrapped itself around Regina’s chest giving her a phantom hug. “I’ll see you tonight, all right?” Regina said softly. “I’ll be a little late. I’m making Gold meet me at city hall instead of come to the house.”

“He was going to…” Emma trailed off.

“Forget I said anything. You nap. I’ll send Henry home quickly.”

“Aren’t you going to miss pickup time because of this thing at the school board?”

“My family comes first,” Regina said. “Just rest. I’ll send Henry home with takeout from Granny’s. Any special requests?” she asked as she stopped on the steps leading up to the building entrance.

“Ask Granny if she’s set up a fresh batch of pickled jalapenos.” Emma hummed through the phone. Regina smiled. “Yeah, that’s gonna hit the spot.”

“Are you…” Regina shook her head. “Fine. Pickled jalapenos. Or at least her hot dill pickles, if she hasn’t done the peppers. I thought you’d get over that craving.”

“It comes and goes.”

“And right now it’s come, hmm?”

“Yeah.”

“All right.” Regina stepped back as a couple people entered the door. “Now, I really do have to go, dear.”

“Thanks, Regina.”

“My pleasure, Emma.”

Regina inhaled and exhaled as she ended the call and tucked her phone back in her pocket. She felt so much better having talked with Emma, ready for anything. It really was such a good feeling. She bit her lip as she acknowledged this did mean what she’d suspected at the Lamaze class. The giddy feeling was only slightly upset by a nervous flutter in her stomach. She was definitely in love with Emma Swan.

“Mayor Mills?” A school board member held the door. “Are you coming in?”

“Hmm? Yes, thank you.” She stepped quickly inside.

“You look a little lost in thought. I remember when my wife was pregnant. Crazy times.”

The fact that his wife had been pregnant before the curse, three decades earlier, made Regina sigh. Was she really acting like an expectant parent?

She smiled at him, but said nothing. He patted her forearm. “You’ll be fine,” he said, offering a final word on the subject before leading the way to the meeting room.

 

* * *

 

 

“Next item on the work committee agenda is landscaping,” Veronica Adair, the school board chairwoman, stated. “Our current contract is up in two months. There are a few proposals…”

Regina sighed as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. As mayor she was required to attend and sign off on any budgetary requests at these meetings, but there wasn’t much she had to say. She looked down at her pad, resisting tapping the pen in her hand.

Below a set of notes about a classroom refurbishment contractor’s name she had written a short string of other names...Lily, Brent, Catherine, Heathcliff, Dakota, Grant, Summer, Buffy… Really? Baby names? Slightly disgusted yet at the same time bemused by her wandering mind, Regina closed her eyes and imagined offering up the names to Emma tonight.

“Grocery list?” Snow spoke from across the table.

“Something like that.”

Around them people were getting up, going over to the sideboard where coffee, tea, and a few small snacks had been set up. Snow pushed to her feet. “I was writing down some things I wanted to remind Emma about,” Snow whispered, showing off her pad.

“She’s sleeping at home,” Regina said.

“You’ve spoken with her today?”

“Yes.”

“How did her doctor appointment go?”

“Whale says everything’s fine. I wish she’d believe him.”

“Is she still thinking of my suggestion for a mobile?”

“She’s considered it,” Regina said. And discarded it, she didn’t add. Emma thought the mobile with little golden suns and white stars that played “Baby Mine.” She had declared the song “possibly the most hideous choice for a happy childhood song.” All she thought about whenever she heard it, Emma said, was how, right after that, Dumbo’s mother had gone away. No way was she doing that to her kid.

“Did she try out the sling yet?”

Regina sipped her coffee. Oh yes, the sling. Emma had tried to put it on the other night only to become frustrated when it kept pushing into her face because her belly was so large.

She’d had Regina model it instead, using a teddy bear, staring up at Regina from the bed with the softest eyes she’d ever seen the blonde show toward her. She had felt her heart race, a desire to tell Emma how she felt dragging on her tongue. Emma had reached for the sling and the teddy bear. As Emma had stood, Regina struggled to free herself from the contraption.

“She likes it,” she said hurriedly to Snow, backing up a step.

“It’s helped so much with our bonding with Neal,” Snow added. “I knew it would work for Emma.”

“Yes, of course,” Regina said quickly.

“Has Emma packed her bag for the hospital?”

“I did that two weeks ago,” Regina said absently.

“You did?” Snow asked.

“Yes, we were running late for class, and she was stressing out about it, so I quickly took care of it.”

“That’s rather inappropriate, don’t you think?”

“If I hadn’t, Emma would have fretted about it for days.”

“She should have Hook with her. I sent him a message.”

“You did what?!”

“The baby’s almost here. He should be too.”

“Emma told him she didn’t need him.”

“Well, she needs someone.”

“ _She has me!_ ” Regina blinked; Snow blinked. Regina added quickly, “And Henry.” She quickly stepped away from Snow, lifted her head and walked back to her seat.

Snow’s words hit Regina in the back as she sat down just as the chairwoman called the meeting back to order. “The way you’re acting you’d think this was _your_ baby, Regina.”

 

* * *

 

 

Regina followed Henry to her office door. “Tell Emma I should be home within the hour. I only have one more appointment.” Henry turned in place and waved the big bag labeled “Granny’s Diner.” “Be careful,” she advised.

“See you later, Mom!” He looked up as a shadow fell over him. “Hey, Grandpa.”

Gold grimaced, but nodded at Henry before returning his gaze to her. “Regina.”

“Gold.”

Jason started toward them. She shook her head. “There will be nothing else, Jason.”

“If you’re sure, ma’am.”

“Good night, Jason.”

He looked at Gold but said, “Good night, ma’am. Sir.”

Gold ignored him.

When they were alone, Regina prompted, ‘What’s on your mind, Gold?”

“I’ve had a few disturbances at my shop. Our charming deputy stopped by.”

“Sounds like everything’s under control. Don’t see how I could help.” She kept her voice light, wanting to hurry him along and get back to Emma. Get home, she thought with a smile. And getting into a confrontation with Rumpelstiltskin would likely leave her in a foul mood.

“It was the fourth time I haven’t seen our esteemed sheriff,” he said. “I asked him about this.”

Regina tensed. “What did he say?”

“That our Sheriff Swan was on an indefinite leave of absence. That’s he is going to be a grandfather. Again.” The air broke with a hiss from Rumple -- and indeed he was the imp in that moment. His eyes glittered with the avarice she had come to know. Too well.

“So naturally you assume, what?” Regina shook her head, unable to keep back her smile. “It’s not Bae’s. He and Emma had reconciled before he died, true, but… things never… resumed between them.” She stomped mentally on the jealousy that sent flickering images into her mind of a younger Emma cavorting with Henry’s father. Her mouth twitched in disapproval at herself, but she felt the pleasure in telling Rumple he would have no connection to _this_ child.

“Interesting.” Regina’s heart clenched. But then Rumple waved his hand dismissively. “Will she be returning to her duties as sheriff? After the child is born?”

Regina knew Emma wanted to do things differently for this child, but how differently had not yet brought up the idea of her not working. “She hasn’t said.”

“And you would know this because you supervise her --” Regina’s gaze narrowed at him. “As mayor, of course,” he added, but Regina knew he gleefully had gleaned something from her, and she hadn’t wanted to give it away.

She pressed her lips together.

“Well, that will be all, Madame Mayor. Would you convey my… concerns -- civic of course -- to Emma.”

Regina’s breath caught. She ground her teeth to prevent barking at him. _Don’t you call her that!_

She leaned heavy on her desk for several minutes after Gold had departed, parsing the conversation for everything she could have possibly revealed beyond what she said. What the hell did the man think he knew? There was no way she would mention this conversation to Emma. The woman would want to march into Gold’s shop and demand answers. Right now, that was the last stressor Emma could possibly need.

Forcing herself to breathe calmly, Regina collected her suit jacket along and headed for home.

###

 


	9. Is There A Name for This?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 9 months. The end of the journey is close, both Emma and Regina can feel it. They share a bit of quiet time in the evening talking baby names and feeling the child moving in Emma's belly. The next morning, Regina and Emma are in bed together when Emma awakens with a backache. Regina tries to press it out, but it won't go, and Emma realizes she's finally in labor, so they go to the hospital.

"Hey," Emma said when Regina came into the apartment. "There's leftovers."

"Thank you," Regina said, pulling off her suit jacket and placing it with her purse on the back of the sofa. "Did you have enough to eat?"

"For now. I appreciated the pickled jalapeños."

Regina smiled as she sat down, lifting Emma's legs into her lap. "I'm glad."

Emma sighed as Regina's hands worked on her feet. "They're not particularly painful," she said honestly.

"You want me to stop?"

"I just don't want you doing something you don't want to."

"Tell me where you are with names?" Regina asked instead, continuing to massage Emma's feet.

"Regina."

"I don't think that's appropriate, dear."

"No, Regina, I didn't mean..." Emma's voice faded with the distraction of Regina's hands. Determined to talk, she reached down and nudged away them away from her feet. "What did Gold want?"

"To push my buttons."

"About what?"

"I really don't think its as important as what we are doing here," Regina said.

"What are we doing here?" Emma asked.

"Talking about baby names," Regina said. "I had a few thoughts this afternoon."

Emma smiled. "Go on."

"How fond are you of classics?"

"Books?" Regina nodded. "Tom and Huck?"

"I was thinking more like Catherine, or Heathcliff."

"Wuthering Heights? Really?" Emma scrunched her nose in dismay.

Regina reached into her bag for the paper from the school board meeting. "Here," she said, passing it to Emma.

Reading, Emma considered each name. "Summer...Buffy? Really?" Emma chuckled. "I always knew you were a closet fan."

"Well, some escapism passes the time." Emma laughed. Regina dipped her head.

"How about Angel?"

"Why don't you want to consider an old world name?" Regina asked.

"Kids can be cruel. I don't want family names for the same reason. I gotta say it everyday."

"What about someone from your travels? Surely you made some friends at times?"

"Avery ran the first bail bonds company I worked for."

"Sounds like a nice man."

"Woman. 14 tattoos, one of which said 'bitchin' biker'," Emma said, shaking her head.

"Colorful."

"Something like that." Emma laughed. She rested her head on her hand as she bent her elbow to the back of the couch.

"Tired?"

"Except for my appointment this morning, I slept most of the day away," Emma lamented. "I'm tired of being tired."

"It's almost over. Soon you'll get to meet her, or him," Regina said.

Emma nodded and rubbed a hand over her belly. She paused, resetting her hand in a place. She smiled. "Hey, feel this," she grabbed Regina's hand.

The other woman leaned awkwardly forward as Emma pushed her palm against the lower right side of her belly.

"There," Emma moved her hand again. "Feel that?"

Regina tucked her feet up onto the sofa to make her stretching a bit less of a strain. After another movement, her eyes lit up. "Hi, there, dear," Regina said, speaking to the spot. Emma felt the baby kick again.

"I think they like your voice," Emma said. "Say something else."

Regina looked up into Emma's face. After a moment she spoke again to the baby. "You're going to really like your momma," she said. "She's a good person."

Emma's eyes became glossy. She moved her hand to cover Regina's as the baby moved again. "Well, I'll try to have only good people in her life anyway." Her gaze never wavered from Regina's until a wide bit of pressure again their hands startled them both.

"That felt wide. Like a back," Regina said.

Emma nodded and her other hand moved to the opposite side. "And I think this is a foot. The baby's turning."

"I think you ought to go to bed."

Emma let Regina help her to her feet. Something definitely shifted then and she grabbed below her belly.

"Emma?"

"It's all right, just...damn, I gotta pee. Right now."

Regina laughed and leaned on the door as Emma disappeared into the bathroom.

 

* * *

 

 

Twisting and shifting to get comfortable, Emma woke herself. The shadows in the room were heavy, and with the curtains pulled shut, she had no idea of the time of day. She lifted her arm to pull down the covers and instead found an arm curved around her and Regina breathing evenly and softly against her neck, her body tucked in all along her back. The comfort of the contact finally outweighed the awkwardness; Regina had fallen asleep a couple times like this before, after knuckling out Emma’s backache, or simply talking, one leg tucked up under herself, while Emma lay back.

They had moved to the bedroom the previous night after talking about more baby names. She had discovered many names led to stories, either hers or Regina’s. Some person from their past had the same name. Claudette, one of Snow’s suggestions, had reminded Regina of a guard, Claude, during her reign, but she’d also known a Claudette to be one of Snow’s ladies in waiting while she was pregnant with Emma.

“I tried to bribe her to leak word when your mother went into labor. Very stubborn woman. Wouldn’t budge.”

Emma had continued to stroke the warm strong arm across her middle as she studied Regina’s face in her sleep. As she felt her chest vibrate a little with the memory of the chuckle she had offered up the night before, Regina’s lashes shifted against her cheeks, then fluttered. Finally, feeling as though she was holding her breath, Emma saw the first appearance of fawn-brown irises. The pupils retracted a little, and a strong jaw worked side to side for a moment.

“Something wrong?” Regina asked. Her voice, low and rumbling from sleepiness, flowed over Emma’s senses like a soothing touch, Regina’s soothing touch.

“No, I just woke up myself.” Emma held Regina’s arm in place though she tried to pull it away.

“I need to get up,” Regina said.

“Do you?” Emma held the woman’s hand against her abdomen as she rolled onto her back. “Baby’s asleep,” she said. “But everything’s so calm right now, I can feel her breathing.”

“You’re still using female pronouns,” Regina’s whispered tone was chiding.

“I can’t shake the feeling,” Emma said. “Stubbornly sticks to my tongue.”

“Your tongue is going to be in for a shock when it’s a boy,” Regina said.

Emma started to answer, enjoying the lightness of their conversation, and wanting to keep it going, keep Regina here with her, but suddenly her belly was tight and her bladder had to go. And nausea sent her hand flying to cover her mouth.

“Emma?” Regina pushed up on one elbow. As she looked down in concern her free hand brushed Emma’s cheek.

“I gotta throw up,” Emma said behind her hand. “Or wet myself, or somethin’.”

“All right.” Regina pulled herself from the bed. Putting her arms under Emma’s shoulders she lifted her to sitting.

Swallowing several times, Emma closed her eyes until the nausea passed.

“Oh, um.” Emma grimaced suddenly. “Bathroom.” Pushing herself off the bed, she set her jaw and her goal for the bathroom across the hall. “Be right back.”

But she needn’t have spoken; Regina followed closely behind, standing outside the door as Emma tried to take care of her business. “Uh, um.” Emma breathed through the pain. She tried rubbing the spot that hurt, but realized quickly it was all over.

“Regina, I… I think it’s labor,” she said on an exhale, quietly, straining.

“I’ll call your father to deal with getting Henry to school.” Regina left the doorway and Emma strained to watch her, but the woman returned before too long, with her phone in hand, already lifting it to her ear. “David. Regina. I’m taking Emma to the hospital. Could you…? No, come see that Henry gets off to school. Thank you.”

Emma sighed as she tried to stand, only to stop on the way to fully upright, bracing against the counter and gritting her teeth. “So, David?” she asked.

“On his way here.”

“My mom?”

“Probably meeting us at the hospital.”

Emma closed her eyes; Regina’s fingertips brushed at her cheeks and, she realized, the tear that had squeezed out of the corner of her eye. “She loves you, Emma.”

“Yeah. I know.” Emma exhaled as the pain subsided. “Let’s get going.”

Regina walked out ahead; Emma saw her grab the overnight bag from behind the table that stood by the apartment’s door. The woman was rumpled in a way Emma had never seen. When retrieving her phone Regina had also pulled on her slacks from the evening before, no doubt from where they had hung on the back of Emma’s bedroom door.

Emma herself was in drawstring thin cotton pants and a short sleeve shirt. “You wanna shower?” she said.

“There will be time for that later,” Regina said. She hurried down the steps, leaving the bag at the bottom before quickly turning around. Before Emma’s hand reached the top of the stair railing, Regina was back at her side. “Hang on,” Regina said. “Careful.” She supported Emma in guiding her body down the stairs and out to the Benz still parked in the spot assigned for Emma’s apartment.

“Front seat,” Emma said. “I don’t think I could get up if I laid down flat right now.”

Regina nodded brusquely and immediately adjusted the front seat’s back to recline as much as possible and then helped Emma into the car.

With Emma reclining the shoulder belt pulled across easily, Emma staring up at the mechanism mounted on the car frame.

“I’ll drive carefully,” Regina assured as she slipped into the driver seat.

“Bag?” Emma asked, surprised she was clearheaded.

“In the trunk. Pain?”

“Not at the moment. Maybe it was a false alarm.”

Regina shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Emma reached out and found Regina’s hand on the gear shift. “I can’t say thank you enough,” she said.

“I should be thanking you, Emma. It’s a chance I never had with Henry.”

“Regina, I --” Emma interrupted herself with a guttural groan. “OK. Fuck. This hurts.”

“Use my phone and mark the time while I drive?” Regina handed it over with her left hand, absently brushing her lips against Emma’s fingers when she handed off the device.

Regina backed out of the space and drove to the hospital while Emma opened the timer app and started counting. The action centered her attention on her breathing and some of the worst pain receded.

They were in the emergency entrance to Storybrooke Hospital it seemed in no time at all. Emma pressed the phone back into Regina’s hand as the woman helped her unbuckle and get out of the car. “About 7 minutes,” she reported. An orderly pushing a wheelchair overheard and shouted, “Delivery!” while he and Regina helped Emma sit.

Another nurse met them just inside the entrance. “This way,” she said, all business. “Your first?” she asked.

“Second,” both Emma and Regina said.

“You have the other child still in the car?”

“At home with his grandfather,” Regina said.

“All right. Let’s get you up to maternity, and send for Dr. Whale.”

The hallway rushed past in a blur of motion and lights, but all Emma heard was the blood rushing in her ears. Regina placed her hand on Emma’s shoulder, and Emma lifted her hand to squeeze back.

 

* * *

 

They were taking a pause in their walking when Snow White burst through the doors marked “Maternity.” Emma, with Regina’s arms around her, sagged against the wall, pressing her forehead into the calming blue plaster. She wore a fetal monitoring belt around her middle.

“Emma!” her mother shouted.

“Hey. Mom.” Emma took long breaths between her words. She put a hand on Regina’s across her side and nodded. “I’m okay,” she murmured, only loud enough for Regina to hear.

“All right,” Regina whispered in return, taking a step back. She turned toward Snow but her eyes focused on every detail as Emma crossed the short distance slowly to meet her mother.

The hand under her abdomen was not white-knuckled, so just for support rather than covering pain. The slow, deep breaths were taken with a tired smile, not a pained grimace. The steps, while shuffled, were taken evenly, not haltingly.

So Regina accepted Emma was, indeed, okay. She turned her attention now to Snow, appraising and assessing the pixie-haired brunette embracing her daughter. Tear-filled eyes looked past Emma’s shoulder and found Regina. Bright red lips pressed to Emma’s sweaty cheek but Snow said nothing into the ear.

Emma directed the embrace, ending it on her own terms, gently pulling back on Snow’s blouse to separate their bodies. “I’m okay,” she told her mother. “I’m fine.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Just trying to give everything a little gravity push,” Emma said. “But,” she indicated the belt, “all signs are normal.”

“I’m glad,” Snow said. “I can help, since I’m here now.”

Emma stepped back and shook her head. Regina watched the wince and knew another contraction was starting. In her head she started counting. “Regina’s my coach,” Emma said. “I got this. She and I have it under control.”

Snow looked at Regina, then back to Emma. “I came to help.”

“Well, I’m still walking,” Emma said.

“In about three minutes, we need to get back to have another check on your vitals,” Regina said.

Emma nodded her thanks and smiled. To Snow she suggested, “You can walk with us.”

“Just walk?” she asked.

“I could use the support,” Emma said. Snow immediately moved to put herself under Emma’s shoulder, between Regina and Emma. Emma pushed her back. “Emotional support,” she clarified.

“Oh.” Snow looked over her shoulder at Regina.

Moving around mother and daughter, Regina caught Emma’s eye. “This way?”

“Yeah. Back to the nurses station. Time for another readout.”

On the opposite side from Snow, Regina walked next to Emma. The blonde’s hand brushed against hers once before gripping it solidly. She nodded in acknowledgement when Emma’s green eyes slid toward her briefly.

The monitoring station report set off a flurry of action. “Under two minutes apart now. Time to see how you’ve dilated,” the nurse said. “Come on.”

She waved them to follow her, leading the way into a nearby room. Standing at the door, she stopped Snow.

“But I’m her mother,” Snow said.

“Waiting room’s over there.”

Regina shut out all the outer noises as she helped Emma onto the exam bed.

“She’s not happy,” Emma said.

“Snow will be fine. You need to focus.” She rested her palm over Emma’s abdomen and felt the deep rippling that signaled the bands of muscle directing Emma’s baby ever downward. Emma gripped her other hand. “Let it go. Just breathe it out.”

The maternity nurse laid a sheet over Emma’s raised knees then bent to examine her. Emma twitched suddenly, spastically squeezing Regina’s hand, but when the nurse came up she was smiling.

“I’ll get Dr. Whale,” she said. “You’re almost fully dilated.”

On her way to the door, the nurse stopped and put her hand on Regina’s shoulder. “You’ll be meeting your baby real soon, moms.”

Regina stared at the nurse’s back for several dumbfounded seconds, then turned back when Emma squeezed her hand again.

“Hey,” Emma said.

“Hey,” Regina replied, feeling a bit dazed.

“You have the most beautiful smile right now, Regina.”

“So do you, Emma.” The smile she referred to quirked up suddenly at one corner, a particularly unique Emma-smile, that made Regina think stupid things like ‘I love you’, but she bit that back as Emma squeezed her hand again.

“Relax, all right,” she said instead. “Whale’s not hear yet, so you can’t push. Breathe it out.”

“Tell. That. To. My abs,” Emma punctuated her words with hard breaths. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and grunted.

“No, no, Emma, look at me. Come on. So, what happened the second time Avery sent you after a bail jumper?”

“What?”

“You’ve told me about your first -- I believe you called it a ‘collar’? -- and the last assignment you finished when Henry found you in Boston.”

Emma looked at her a little like she’d lost her mind. Regina smiled. The pushing had stopped. “So tell me about your second assignment,” she reiterated.

Taking a deep breath, Emma focused only on her. They both took mild awareness of the arrival of Whale.

“My second collar for Avery was a… a thief … jumped bail ...thought he’d be deported. He was illegal.”

“What?” Whale asked.

“She’s not talking to you,” Regina said quickly.

“Contraction?” he asked Regina. She nodded.

“Go on, Emma. He was an immigrant?”

Her hand was squeezed again as Dr. Whale bent to look under Emma’s sheet. “72 seconds,” Regina murmured.

“Nice. Good. Good.” Straightening again, Whale asked, “So what’s this story?”

“Bail jumper,” Emma gritted between her teeth.

“60 seconds,” Regina reported.

“I thought you were listening to me?” Emma snapped.

“I am, dear. I can count, too. So, what was his name? And how did you apprehend him?”

“Alejandro. It’s not like I could pass --” She cut herself off. Regina gripped her supportively around the back. Regina rubbed her belly down by her back. Emma blew out the breath. “As a Latina,” Emma finished.

She looked up at Regina then and smiled. “You could. Huh?”

Emma’s face scrunched up as she cocked her head sideways and stared at Regina’s face.

“Are you Latina? Do you speak Spanish? What was your father? Do they even have Latinos in the Enchanted Forest?”

Regina puzzled through the numerous questions and frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Emma’s hand lifted to a lock of Regina’s hair on her shoulder. “You’re gorgeous.”

Caught off-guard by the heat in her face at Emma’s adoring look, Regina patted Emma’s hand on her belly, only to have the woman stroke the back of her hand in return. She shook her head and smiled. Emma was clearly unfiltered as a result of the pain and exhaustion.

“What about Alejandro? Focus, Emma. What’d you do? Seduce him?” Regina asked pushing out the idea of the blonde wrapped up in the arms of a darkly handsome male.

“Nah, I posed… as a woman willing to marry him … keep him in the country... for his gang bosses.” She frowned. “He didn’t like blondes though.”

“I can’t imagine. You’re very likeable.”

Emma snorted, burying her face in Regina’s chest. “He sussed me out right away.”

“He hurt you?” Regina tensed at the idea.

“I hurt him first.” Emma gave her a goofy proud smile. “The end.”

“Good timing,” Whale said. “It’s time to get busy. You’re ready.”

“Oh, thank god.” Emma pushed onto her elbows and Regina adjusted pillows behind her back, just as they had practiced.

“You need any ice?” she asked as Emma clearly bore down, squeezing Regina’s forearm. Emma shook her head.

“All right, now breathe into the next one.”

“I remember,” Emma growled.

Regina grinned and brushed her lips against Emma’s brow. “Good.” She looked at Whale between Emma’s knees. “Well?”

“Baby’s crowning. It won’t be long at all.”

Regina looked down to see Emma’s head dropping and the tendons standing out in sharp relief on her neck. She reached for a cold, wet cloth and used it to brush the hair out of Emma’s face.

Emma’s breathing remained deep and steady. “You’re doing great,” Regina told her.

“Thank you for being here,” Emma groaned.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” Regina said sincerely.

Green eyes lifted to hers. Whatever the moment would have been however was interrupted by Emma’s gasp, groan, and gritted teeth as she lifted up, bent toward her knees and muttered, “Sonofabitch!”; the last syllable stretched out until she untensed. Regina helped her ease back against the pillows.

As Emma panted, Whale spoke. “Almost. Do that again, Emma. Just once more.”

“Fuck you,” Emma muttered, but she sat up, gripping Regina’s arm.

Regina wrapped her other arm around Emma’s back. “Together,” she said into the ear against her mouth. “I promise.”

She felt the second the contraction started, Emma’s every muscle seemed to harden, steel under the satin of her skin. She hummed a lullaby she had sung to Henry in Emma’s ear.

Tears coated Emma’s face, mingling with the sweat as she continued to bear down through the contraction.

A sustained guttural cry accompanied the end of the pressure and Emma gasped. Then the air was filled with a baby’s high cry.

Whale lifted the screaming baby, umbilical dragging between his fingers. Then Emma turned her head toward Regina. “Is that… A girl?”

Regina blinked, surprised to be clearing her own eyes of tears and looked at the crying infant as the outright bawling changed to cries and hiccups. “Yes,” she noticed. “Yes, it’s a girl.”

The color of the baby’s skin lightened to a blotchy red. She appeared to be mostly bald, skin streaked and wet with blood and fluid, but both Emma and Regina pressed their hands to her back when Whale laid her on Emma’s stomach.

“Oh, hi,” Regina gasped in awe when she saw the scrunched up face.

“Hey,” Emma echoed, sounding a little clogged.

Whale clipped off the umbilical cord. “You want me to do this?” he asked.

“Regina, please?”

He nodded at them both, offering a grunt that sounded like approval as he put the surgical scissors in her palm.

“I’ll fill out the birth certificate while you do that. What’s her name?” Whale asked.

“We never agreed on a name,” Emma said. “So, Regina, what do you think? What does she look like to you?”

A tiny fist had already found its way against the baby’s mouth. The lips were so vividly red against the olive complexion. And now, as the skin dried, Regina could see a light dusting of wispy brown hair. “Her color is so vivid.” She almost looked like a fresh oil painting.

Emma smiled tiredly, brushing her fingers over the baby’s bottom. “What do you think of Vivian?”

“It’s nice,” Whale said.

“I was asking Regina,” Emma said.

Regina shrugged, too overcome to immediately speak. “I…” She found Emma’s gaze searching hers. “I like it.”

“Good. Me, too.”

“All right. I’ll fill that in while you do the honors.” He stepped back. Regina’s hands were shaking. “If you’re going to faint at the sight of blood, tell me before you do it.”

“I’ll be fine,” Regina said, putting a little haughtiness into her tone. But Emma held her forearm as she cut the cord.

“Good. Now. You take Vivian and follow the nice nurse while Emma and I get the afterbirth and clean up.”

Receiving Vivian into her arms from Whale, Regina asked Emma, “You’ll be all right?”

Emma nodded. Her color was washed out, but to Regina she only looked tired, not hurting. “Go,” Emma said.

“All right, Emma,” Whale interjected. “Let’s finish this up and get your family in to see the newest addition.”

Regina followed the nurse out to another room where she supervised all the newborn tests she had missed with Henry.

###


	10. Our Family Starts Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family visits at the hospital. Late the next day, Regina drives Henry, Emma and Vivian home.

Emma woke up in a haze of darkness, pain, and still feeling an overwhelming pull of exhaustion. But the need was urgent. She reached down to her belly, feeling its softness, and emptiness. She jolted upright, breathing quickly. “Vivian!”

A voice, followed by gentle hands, touched her, centered her, calmed her. “Sh, she’s right here. The bassinet’s by the bed.”

“Regina,” Emma breathed in the scent of the other woman as she threw her arms around her. “You’re still here.”

“I am.” The body shifted and Emma felt a strong thigh press against her own. “Would you like some light?” Regina asked.

Inhaling against Regina’s neck, Emma caught only the faint remains of a soapy scent. “Did you get a shower?” she asked, vaguely recalling now she had suggested the woman get one before they left for the hospital.

“Light?” Regina stretched away. Emma clung.

Suddenly the fluorescent bar above Emma’s hospital bed flickered and illuminated the room.

“I ask you about light, and you ask me if I am clean?” Regina asked again.

Emma smiled.

“You look very tired still,” Regina said. Her fingertips brushed what Emma guessed were the signs of exhaustion sagging under her eyes.

“I need to hold her,” Emma said.

“Of course.” Regina’s smile was understanding. “You did it, Emma. I promise. She’s perfect. And she’s yours. No one took her away.”

Emma’s throat tightened. She couldn’t speak.

“Sit up a bit.” Regina pulled away, despite Emma’s attempt to keep hold of her hands.

She watched Regina rise and then bend over. She held her breath as Regina straightened and turned around, now holding a tiny bundle.

“Vivian,” Regina spoke quietly, but her tone was colored with the same gentle emotions she had always shown with Henry. “Momma wants to talk with you.”

Emma extended her arms, fingers twitching. All she could see was the pale green knit cap, a tightly wrapped blanket and one tiny fisted hand swinging slightly in the air.

Regina then brought Vivian down to her, putting her in Emma’s hands, supporting the baby’s head behind Emma’s own hand, transferring her gingerly. She released reluctantly when Vivian was tucked against Emma’s body.

The effort to move was painful, but Emma exhaled it out, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“Em?”

She looked up to see Regina settling herself again. “I’m okay,” she said. “She’s okay,” she added, looking back down at the scrunched up face.

Regina eased a lock of hair behind Emma’s shoulder. “Yes. Yes, you are.”

“Is the family ready for visitors?”

Emma looked past Regina to the doorway, finding a nurse in colorful scrubs. “What time is it?”

“It’s after six,” the nurse replied.

“A.M. or P.M.?” Emma asked.

“P.M. You gave birth about five hours ago.”

“No wonder I feel like I’m drugged. I’ve been sleeping ten to twelve hours the last few weeks.”

The nurse smiled at her. “Sleep’ll kind of be a luxury for a few months.”

“She’s sleeping now,” Emma said, though she could feel slight movement in the baby’s shoulders and legs.

“Birth is hard on everybody,” the nurse explained. “We keep talking though and she’ll wake up. She doesn’t want to miss anything.”

Vivian’s movements were indeed becoming more defined. She was swaddled, though, and the lack of room began to make her fuss.

“See?” the nurse said. Emma cupped the tiny waving fist in her palm. “I’ll bring a bottle. She’s bound to be hungry.”

“But,” Emma hesitated. She felt the distending pressure in her breasts, and a throbbing ache in the tissues. “I can do it.”

“I can get you the bottle.”

“No, I mean…” Emma looked at Regina. “I want to breastfeed.”

“Did they give her a shot?” the nurse asked Regina.

The brunette stood, and shook her head. “I don’t think so. We didn’t talk about it.” She looked at Emma.

“I think I’d remember a shot,” Emma said.

“All right, I’ll send in the midwife.”

Regina looked back down at Emma when they were alone. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I didn’t… with Henry.” She looked back down at Vivian’s scrunched face, feeling the need pulling at her chest. “I want to try.”

“Then you’ll succeed,” Regina said.

The midwife entered with a bag she set aside on the small bed table. “Hello, momma,” she greeted Emma.

“I’ll be outside,” Regina said.

“No, you can stay,” Emma said.

“But this is…” Regina trailed off and her hands came up in a helpless sweep. “Private.”

“You shared Henry’s childhood with me. I want to share Vivian’s with you.”

“But --”

“I wouldn’t have gotten through these months without you, Regina.”

“Sounds like you’re staying,” the midwife said with a smirk.

To Emma’s relief, Regina sagged down, settling back into the seat beside the bed. The midwife helped Emma arrange herself and Vivian from the other side. Seeming to sense what was coming, Vivian’s fussing became more agitated.

Emma sought out Regina’s eyes when Vivian finally latched on, letting the brunette see her every reaction to the sensations.

Sharp arousal throbbed in Emma’s groin as she watched Regina’s eyes dart back and forth over Vivian and Emma’s breast. She imagined Regina’s teeth, currently caught on the woman’s full bottom lip, teasing at Emma’s own skin. Emma squirmed and looked at the midwife in alarm.

“That’s normal, honey,” the midwife said with a chuckle.

“What?” Regina asked, clearly confused.

“Arousal during nursing. Releases all the best chemicals in momma here.” The midwife patted Emma’s shoulder. “But you stick to cuddling ‘til you heal up,” she scolded lightheartedly.

“Uh. Yeah. Right.” Emma dropped her gaze feeling her cheeks flame. “Right.”

The midwife chuckled again.

When Emma chanced to glance back up at Regina, to see her reaction, she saw that the brunette’s throat had also reddened, all the way down to her collarbones.

 

* * *

 

 

“Ma! Mom!” Henry’s voice reached them first, before he had even entered the room. Behind him followed David, and then Snow. Regina held Vivian while Emma was putting herself back into the bed after a short, but successful trip to the bathroom. Her dinner tray, late though it had been, lay on the bed table now empty and waiting to be collected.

“Hello, Henry,” Regina said. “Time to meet your sister.”

He huddled on Regina’s far right side, and pulled back the little corner of blanket that half-covered Vivian’s face. “She’s cute.”

“I think she’s beautiful,” Regina breathed.

Henry hugged Regina’s shoulder and looked up at Emma. “What’s her name?”

“Vivian,” Emma said. “Your mom made the suggestion.”

“She did?” Snow asked.

“Well, she described her as ‘vivid’, so that’s what I came up with.”

“You…” Snow looked at Regina, then David, then finally to Emma she said, “It’s a nice name.”

“Thanks, I like it,” Emma said. “Doesn’t remind me of anyone I know, knew, or any fairytales.”

“That was important to you,” Snow said

Regina heard the note of revelation in the woman’s voice. She shook her head and stood, passing Vivian back over to Emma now that she was resettled.

Emma’s hand squeezed hers hidden beneath Vivian’s blanket. She looked to up to find Emma giving her a warm smile. She smiled back, dipped her head and took a step back. “I am going to look for Dr. Whale and see when he’ll be stopping by.”

Henry pulled himself onto the bed next to Emma and reached out to touch his sister once more. Emma wrapped her arm around his back and kissed his forehead. “We’ll be here,” Emma told her. “Don’t take too long. Vivian’s going to need a change soon.” The blonde punctuated her statement with a wide, dopey smile.

That made Regina feel a bit dopey, too. Shaking her head she stepped outside, hearing both David and Snow, who apparently had been frozen while Regina was present, swarm their daughter and new granddaughter.

 

* * *

 

 

David crossed his arms, standing back from Emma though he looked enamored of the entire view. Emma smiled up at him then turned her attention to Snow, who had put her hand on the bed, curled over Emma’s calf under the blankets. “So, you came here instead of taking Henry to school?”

“It’s not everyday you get a baby sister,” Snow said.

“True.” Emma settled Vivian across her thighs, on her stomach, rubbing her back as she drifted back to sleep. “I’m feeling pretty good though, so Whale will probably let us go tomorrow.”

“We’ll wait to hear what he has to say,” David said. “I’m just glad you and Vivian are all right.”

“I did do this once before,” Emma said, looking over at Henry, who rolled his eyes. “I did, but seriously, your mom was great,” she told him. “Couldn’t have done this without her.”

Henry nodded. “So, what are we gonna do now?”

Emma thought about what she wanted to do. Ask Regina to go out with her. But, a look from Henry to her parents, and she shook her head. “I dunno. But we’ll figure it out.”

“All right.” He kissed her cheek and slid off the bed. “I’m gonna go find Mom.”

Not really wanting to be alone with her parents, but recognizing that there would not be any more delaying, Emma nodded at him. “Okay. See you in a few minutes.”

After Henry walked out, she looked at her parents. “Regina told me you tried to contact Killian.”

“I sent Ariel with a message for him,” Snow said.

“He answer it?” Emma grumbled, looking away from Snow.

Snow’s dejection was evident when she responded. “No.”

“Now, will you leave it alone?”

Snow looked ready to cry, but she nodded.

“Thank you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to raise my daughter, as I didn’t get to raise my son,” Emma said softly. “And try to enjoy my family.”

David nodded. “When you’re ready to return to work, Sheriff’s job will be waiting.”

“Thanks, David, but I think I’ll pull my name out of the next election. You can run. If you want.”

“What are you going to do?” Snow asked, and the fear that Emma was pulling up roots to leave was plain in the high-pitched question.

“I’d like to keep working, as a deputy, maybe.”

Snow’s relief was palpable. “Oh.”

Emma heard footsteps and voices in the corridor and pushed herself up, cradling Vivian to her chest. “Sounds like Whale’s here.”

David and Snow stepped back from the bed just as Whale entered the room with Regina and Henry behind him. “Good morning, Emma. How are you feeling?”

“Ready to go home,” she said, catching Regina’s eye over the doctor’s shoulder.

 

* * *

 

Regina pulled the Benz to a stop in the space in front of Emma’s apartment. Turning she looked back to see Henry already pushing out of the car. Emma was working her seatbelt to get out and… “Let me get Vivian. You’re supposed to take it easy. No heavy lifting.”

“She’s not even eight pounds, Regina.”

“Yes, but the car seat adds more.”

Emma sighed then pulled herself gingerly from the car. “I could just leave it in here.”

Regina felt her heart skip a beat at the implication. “Go up and unlock the door. I’ll follow.”

“You’ll _follow?_ ” Emma chuckled. “Whoever thought anyone would _ever_ hear you say that?”

Regina felt her throat heat again. “No one else will ever get to hear it.”

Emma apparently took that as admonition. She saluted cheekily. “I won’t tell. Our secret.”

The blonde wore a beaming smile even as she pulled open the door to the steps and made her way slowly upward. Regina shook her head and leaned into the car, unbuckling and removing Vivian from the complex system of restraints as she blithely kept sleeping.

Regina kissed the smooth forehead as she lifted the baby and settled her against her upper chest with a broad hand, closing the door with the other.

 _This feels familiar_ , she thought, looking at the door ahead and remembering bringing Henry home for the first time from Boston. She was reaching for the door when it opened.

“Henry,” she said, identifying her son pushing outward.

“I was just coming to get you.”

“I had to collect Vivian. Would you get Emma’s bag, and Vivian’s, from the trunk?” She passed him the key fob. She let him hold the door and then made her way up the stairs carefully.

She paused at the open threshold to Emma’s apartment.

“Come on in,” Emma said. “You certainly don’t need permission.”

“Where do you want me to put her down?” Turning her gaze through the open space of the apartment, she finally found Emma leaning on the wall outside the kitchen. “You changed already?”

“I’ll take a shower, later, but yeah, I wanted to get out of those pregnancy pants.”

“You’re not quite back to your usual skinny jeans,” Regina said.

“No, but jeans, thank you very much.” She modeled the stretch denims with a thumb pulling at the elastic waist.

Regina laughed and handed Vivian to Emma, watching the way the baby curled into her mother’s chest. Emma shifted the baby into just one arm, butt in the crook of her elbow and hand across the back of Vivian’s head. Puzzled, Regina looked up to find Emma studying her.

“Something you need?” she translated the questioning gaze in green eyes.

“Just…” Emma’s free hand caught one of Regina’s, the thumb tracing the tendons and knuckles. “Regina, I…” Emma inhaled then blew out the breath. “The last nine months have been amazing.”

“Different from Henry?” Regina asked.

“In all the best ways,” Emma said. “And that was… it was all _you_.”

Regina looked down at their joined fingers, gaze drifting back up to Vivian sleeping, and then Emma’s face. Her throat became tight. “Nine months doesn’t seem like a very long time.”

“A lot’s changed,” Emma said. She wasn’t looking away.

“Emma, I…” Regina cleared her throat. “I… don’t want to go.”

“I have no plans to ask you to go.”

“You don’t?”

“Can we put Vivian down in her bed?”

Emma pulled away; Regina was drawn to follow. “Emma.”

Vivian went down in the small bassinet by Emma’s bed without ever really waking up from the drive. Regina watched Emma kiss Vivian and wet her own lips as Emma stood.

“Regina?”

“Emma.” Regina moved quickly forward, putting her hands on Emma’s upper arms. “Please tell me what to do here.”

“What do you want to do?”

Regina pulled Emma into a hug, tears gathering in her eyes as her throat clogged. “I’ll do anything for you, for Henry. For Vivian,” she added, pulling back.

“What if all we -- any of us want -- is you. Just you?”

Regina’s legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore. Sagging to the edge of the bed, she searched Emma’s eyes for the truth of her words. “I love you.”

Emma started to straddle Regina’s hips, only to wince when her body signaled it wasn't quite ready to stretch that way. So she slid sideways across Regina’s thighs, lacing her fingers through the ends of Regina’s hair and applying a little pressure under her jaw, lifting her face. “That’s what I want,” she murmured, just before pressing her lips to Regina’s.

In a rush of giddiness and deepening the kiss, Regina wrapped both arms around Emma’s body, hands splaying on the lusher curves and then massaging into muscles she had come to know over the last several months. She wanted to learn them more intimately; she nipped at Emma’s lips gathering her breath.

“Mom! Ma!”

Regina pulled back from Emma’s mouth, but could not bring herself to release Emma’s hips. Both women turned to the doorway where Henry leaned, arms crossed, smirking at them.

“Henry?”

“About time,” he said.

Emma dropped her head to Regina’s shoulder, as she had done so often during movie nights in the last few months, but stroking her thumb under Regina’s hair and feeling the woman’s body shiver against her own. That was precious and new and a laugh bubbled up against Regina’s ear, setting off another shiver. The arousal was back. She shifted then sighed as Regina’s hand skimmed her hip and the squeeze made her grimace. A snuggle it would have to be.

“Thanks, kid,” she said to Henry. “Now, take your sister out into the living room. Quietly. I need a nap.”

Lifting up the bassinet, Henry walked out again. “I’ll make my own lunch,” he added, pulling the door shut and leaving the two women alone in the room.

Emma left Regina’s lap, hands lingering and drifting across the other woman’s body as she moved herself onto the bed and laid down.

“But you’re not healed,” Regina objected even as she let Emma pull her down.

“I was thinking of just snuggling, but I’m glad to know we both want this to eventually get to the same place,” Emma said, chuckling as she put her hands behind Regina’s head and pulled the woman’s face down for more kisses.

Regina’s body settled into alignment alongside hers, a warm palm caressing the softness of her belly, easing the slight tension in the tired muscles there. With a contented sigh, Emma curled into Regina. “You are so good,” she murmured against Regina’s neck.

“You bring it out in me,” Regina replied, whispering against Emma’s forehead. “Now, go to sleep. I’ll be here.”

Emma closed her eyes, listening to Regina’s breathing, feeling her heartbeat’s steady thrum under her fingers. Both had become sleep inducing over the last few months, whether Regina was beside her on the sofa during a movie, or on the bed with her after a tension-melting massage. Now was no exception. In fact, Emma decided, it was much, much better as Regina’s lips pressed softly to her forehead. And stayed there.

 

###

_(and that, I think, is the end)_

 

 


End file.
